* r/ 4, 




B& Business 




> ^pm^ 




QjtfUh 



hdUxxs: 





Class _£ilA£Al 
O 



Book 







(kpightN°__:m 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



The Big Business of 
Life 



The Business of Abolishing Work and 

Turning this World Back 

into a Playground 



Success for Everybody and 
within Everybody's Grasp 



By Ralph Parlette 

Author of " The University of Hard Knock* ' 



PUBLISHED BY 

PARLETTE-PADGET COMPANY 
CHICAGO 



fc 



\l 



&£?> 

w 



Copyright, 1917, 1919 

by 

PARLETTE-PADGET COMPANY 
CHICAGO 



All Rights Reserved 



JUN 28 1922 

©CI.A677333 



Let's Talk It Over 

"T) LEASE FOEGET that we are going to 
Y^ have a lecture, ' ' I have many times asked 
of audiences at the outset. ' ' Please let us 
feel as tho just you and I, just the two of us, were 
sitting in your home or mine talking over these 
things. I know that when I am in an audience and 
somebody comes out on the platform to speak, I 
generally feel that it is a 'show' or ' performance. ' 
Somehow he does not get as close to me as tho 
the two of us were sitting down and talking it over 
between ourselves. Let us make this a personal, 
heart-to-heart talk, for that is the way I feel about 
it." 

Big Business — what is that? Standard Oil? 
Trusts? Eailroads? Oh, no! Ever so much 
bigger — the business that underlies all business — 
the Business of Being Ourself. 

I congratulate you as I congratulate myself that 
we have the wonderful privilege of Being Our- 
self. Nobody else can be Ourself, and we can be 
nobody else. 

And Being Ourself — Being What We Are 
Planned To Be — is the supreme success and hap- 



6 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

piness. Each one of us can be supremely suc- 
cessful and happy. 

How? In what follows I shall try to tell you 
how, as I see it. 



"What Career Shall I Choose?" 

0, how we worry over that question ! Did you 
ever hear anybody asking, "What career shall I 
choose ?" Did you ever hear a father asking, 
"What career shall I choose for my child ?" 

As tho we could choose a career like we choose 
a necktie or a farm or an automobile ! 

Why not as well ask, "What color of hair shall 
I choose ? Shall I choose to be tall or short, stout 
or slender ?" 

An apple-sprout might as well ask, "What ca- 
reer shall I choose? Shall I be an apple tree or 
a gooseberry bush?" 

A minnow might as well ask, "What career 
shall I choose? Shall I be a fish, a flower or a 
bird? If I choose a seafaring career, as father 
strongly advises, shall I be a turtle or a tadpole, 
a clam or a codfish, a whale or a porpoise? Each 
has its advantages and its disadvantages. I 
think the profession is terribly overcrowded, and 
I shall be a peach or a pippin. ' ' 



LET'S TALK IT OVEB 7 

M 

The fledgeling might as well ask, "What career 
shall I choose? If I choose aviation or an orni- 
thological career, shall I be a redbird, a bluebird 
or a blackbird? Shall I be a crow, a canary or a 
cockatoo ? But really I see so many rushing into 
the air I fear the field will be overcrowded. ' ' 

The plant just breaking thru the soil in the gar- 
den might as well ask, "What career shall I 
choose? Shall I be an onion, a radish, a tomato, 
a carrot, a cauliflower, a cucumber or a dill pickle ? 
I am inclined to be a strawberry, for strawberries 
are bringing such a high price in the market to- 
day." 

The flowers in our front yards could as well ask, 
"What career shall I choose? Shall I be a pansy, 
a poppy or a peony, a carnation, a rose, a lilac 
or a hollyhock ?" 

We cannot choose a career; the career chooses 
us. The apple-sprout never makes a mistake. The 
onion never makes a mistake, nor does the min^ 
now, the bird or the flower. None of them have 
to go to some vocational diagnostician to know 
what to be. Something inside tells them what to 
be. Little faculties and talents cry out to be used, 
and they follow these calls. 

I believe none of us ever need mistake our 
career if we follow the calls from within. 

Isn't this the reason there is so much work, 



8 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

worry, fuss, trial and tribulation among mortals, 
and none among the plants, flowers and " lower 
animals' '? We toil and tribulate trying to make 
ourselves into unnatural " careers,' ' while they 
' 'toil not, neither do they spin." and yet they 
deliver the perfect, ripened goods! 

We can only chose whether we will be Ourself 
or something unnatural. We can only choose 
whether we will follow the mariner's compass of 
our life or let the winds and tides sweep us on the 
rocks. 

There are only two jobs in the world — living 
and making a living. Further over in this talk I 
call them " thimble jobs" and "meal ticket jobs" 
— things that we love to do, which is living, and 
things that we have to do, which is making a liv- 
ing. 

So many of us have been so busy these years 
making a living, we haven't done much living. 
We have been so busy getting things, we haven't 
had time to be. 

We have been so busy trying to get happiness, 
we haven't had time to be happy! 

Don't worry, don't hurry! We are not missing 
anything. What is ours waits on us and comes to 
us just as fast as we let it. 

Let your light shine ! 

Find your ' ' thimbles ! ' ' 



LET'S TALK IT OVER 9 

Turning Work into Play 

The Big Business of Life is the business of 
being happy. It is the business of being our nat- 
ural self. It is the business, then, of abolishing 
all work and struggle and turning this world 
back into a playground. 

Study about that word "back." 

I am getting down on work. I refuse to work. 
Work is the curse of Cain upon the race. I beg 
of you never to work. If you have ever worked, 
promise never to work again. If you know any- 
body who does work, get him to stop this perni- 
cious life-shortening practice. 

Do I mean to quit our activities? 0, no, I mean 
to increase them, naturalize them, and thus turn 
them into play. 

Work breaks people down; play builds people 
up. 

"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." 
Yes, but all play and no work makes Jack an 
artist ! 

I am just beginning to "become as a little 
child." Just relearning how to play. I used to 
work very hard having "careers" and things. I 
spoke often of my work before men, accounting 
it a great virtue. I would say, "I am so busy!" 
"I am just overwhelmed with work." "I have 
to work night and day." "I haven't a minute 



10 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

I can call my own." I felt so flattered when peo- 
ple would say, "Poor man! He is such a hard 
worker. He is breaking himself down with hard 
work!" 

I went around posing as a martyr to a duty. I 
carried the world on my shoulders like another 
Atlas. What would the world ever do if I should 
ever break down ? Like Chanticleer, how could the 
sun rise if I did not crow at two in the morning? 
I worried for myself and took in worrying for 
others. I did plain and ornamental worrying on 
the shares. 

Now I smile at these performances. Now I 
know when a man is "too busy" he is confessing 
lack of interest. The man who hasn't time to do 
anything is the loafer. The man who is "too 
busy" lacks heart and vision in his work, not time 
for it. We have time for everything our heart 
calls us to do. The busiest man can take on the 
most new load. The world does not rest upon 
anybody's shoulders, nor does it particularly need 
anybody. But we need the world for a play- 
ground. We are not saving the world, we are sav- 
ing ourselves by serving the world and playing 
the game. The man who takes himself seriously 
is the real humorist. 

I am getting so I can play ten to twenty hours 
a day without getting too busy. I have exchanged 
my baby rattlebox for a typewriter, and rattling 



LET'S TALK IT OVEE 11 

it is more fun. I used to play "two old cat" and 
run the bases, but playing lyceum and chautauqua 
circuits and running for trains is a lot more fun 
today. I used to play at being an editor when I 
was a boy, but it is more fun today as a gray, griz- 
zled boy being editor with real printers and real 
presses. 

So isn't it a wonderful discovery that all this 
world is just a playground ! That running banks, 
mills, shops, stores, schools, studios, farms, homes 
is just playing greater, happier games with finer 
toys and tools! Here's for a finer game today 
than you and I have ever before played! 



NASuU/JJa 



Chicago, 111., October 1, 1919. 



What's in It? 



LET'S TALK IT OVER — A visit with you first — We cannot 
choose a career — We can only be our natural self or a 
failure — Quitting- work and learning to play — Nobody too 
busy — Grownup work just greater games than child- 
hood games 5 

I. THE BUSINESS OF SUCCEEDING, "Press the But- 
ton!" — Success not in getting the gold bands, diamonds 
and big house on the outside of the flashlight, but in let- 
ting the inside shine out — "Shine your light!" — All seek- 
ing happiness, whatever we do, wherever we go — Amaz- 
ing efforts to be happy — Only two places in which to seek 
happiness, Outside and Inside — Little Business and Big- 
Business 15 

II. THE OUTSIDERS, The Little Business of Getting — 
"Goin' from where dey are to where dey ain't" — Childhood 
confessions, my toe, the moon, the hornets' nest — Getting 
to Carcassonne — Each envies the other — The "tired busi- 
ness man" and why — Happy and unhappy children — King 
"Got-it-All" hunts for the shirt of the contented man — 
Happiness not on the Outside, but on the Inside 24 

III. THE INSIDERS, The Big Business of Being — Aladdin 
and his wonderful lamp the truth about ourselves — The 
difference between work and play — Quit work and turn 
all living into play — "Becoming as a little child" — The 
child Jesus in Big Business — All nature at play — Being 
what we are created to be, the only success — Success the 
natural condition for everybody — Playing "Find the 
Thimble" — We are all "called" — The call of Samuel — The 
fiddle calling the boy — Get out of your cage! — The re- 
juvenation of "Napoleon Bonaparte" 38 

IV. GETTING EDUCATED, Learning to Follow the Calls — 
Life is expression, not repression — Specialize on the 
"warmer" studies — Confessions of a "blockhead" — 
Some famous "blockheads" — Barnum on mistaking voca- 
tions — The calling of Biddy Brahma — Father's chicken 
was a duck — Dodging the pulpit for the printshop— 
Behind the scenes with a platform lecturer — Parents 
should let child develop naturally — Rejoice in your job 

or find the job you can make your playground 66 

13 



14 WHAT'S IN IT? 

V. YES, YOU CAN! Find Your "Thimbles" and "Meal- 
Tickets" — You can make your dreams come true — Follow 
that inside call — The early struggles of Schumann- 
Heink — Distinguish between true calls and false calls — 
Why Nordica said don't try for grand opera — Go home and 
sing — Amateurs happy in their efforts — Go on writing, 
even if editors reject your stuff — If unable to live on 
"thimble" job, get a "meal-ticket" job — Don't work for a 
living, live for a work — Fall in love with your work, 
marry it and be happy 90 

VI. WHY AM I NOT HAPPIER? Press More Buttons — Un- 
happy printing plant becomes happy when striking press- 
men return and press the buttons — Starting our idle bat- 
teries — The idlers and incompetents — The Big and Little 
Businessmen in the community — Educational snobbery — 
We are free and equal — Each has a natural monopoly of 
his own talents — Not playing for the gate receipts — 
Enlarge your playground — The trainman who cheered 
us — Give the little things — All of us parts of the humanity 
watch — -Big Business the business of brotherhood Ill 

VII. GET YOUR PAY NOW, In Your Heart, Not in Your 
Pocket — Success and salary not synonyms — Salaries often 
world's confessions — Most successful often poorest sal- 
aried but best paid — Why we take money for our work — 
We can only own as we earn — Big Business pay all C. O. 
D. — All players are artists — Michael Angelo, Edison, Sun- 
day, "Sadie," great players, not workers — The aristocracy 
of workmanship — The cure for jealousy — The highly paid 
people — The successful old failure — How my old teacher 
won "The Dirty Dozen" — Analyze your motives — Get your 
full reward today and close the books — Look out for the 
selfish motive 137 

VIII. GREATER SUCCESS FOR EVERYBODY, It is Right 
at Your Hand — People can find happiness everywhere — 
Nobody "off the main line" — Beautiful landscapes right 
around you — The "Bluebird" can come to every home — 
Happiness more than "Cheer up!" and "Grin and bear it!" 
— Jesus the man of happiness, not "The Man of Sor- 
rows" — Organizing Flashlight Clubs in Schools — Success 
shines in our faces — Bryan a type of successful defeat — 
Irrigating the "Great American Desert" — Turning 
Troubles into jewels — The world already a playground 
school — Big Business the long-sought Philosopher's 
Stone 170 



The Big Business of Life 



T 



THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

HE business of being happy. 

* * # 

The business of being ourselves. 



# # * 

The business of getting naturalized. 

# * * 

The business of turning our work into play. 

# # # 

The business of making our talents shine. 






The business of being what we are created 

to be. 

# # # 

The business of getting our happiness in- 
side and not outside. 

* * * 

The business of getting our happiness now 
in our work and not tomorrow for our 
work. 



The Big Business of Life 

CHAPTER I 
THE BUSINESS OF SUCCEEDING 

"Press the Button!" 

(The Lecturer holds a flashlight before the audience.) 

WHAT is the matter with my flashlight! 
Why isn't it a success? It comes from 
one of the oldest and most exclusive 
flashlight factories in the land. The owners of 
the company trace their ancestry back to the May- 
flower. My flashlight has been finished under the 
best masters. 

But it does not shine ! 

"Flashlight, succeed! Do your duty! Get 
busy ! Shine ! ' ' 

I go up and down the street asking people, 
1 1 What is the matter with my flashlight ? How can 
I make it a success?" 

So many people say, "Why, man, what do you 
expect for a dollar? Your flashlight is only brass. 
Nothing as cheap as that can be a success. Get 
gold bands around it if you want to get it recog- 

15 



16 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

nized as a successful flashlight. Success costs 
money nowadays.' ' 

"0, thank you!*' I go to work and toil and 
sacrifice, cheered with the thought that afterwhile 
my flashlight will have the gold bands around it, 
and it will be a success. And when I get the gold 
bands around it, I say, "Gold-mounted flashlight, 
at last you are a success.' ' 

But it does not shine! It is a gold-mounted 
failure. 

"Put diamonds around it, set it with jewels," 
says a society queen. "Once you make your flash- 
light brilliant with gems, it will be the most beau- 
tiful and sought-after flashlight in the city. It 
simply must get the recognition of the elite to 
succeed and get on at all." 

"0, thank you, Miss Queen." I toil on getting 
the gems. I am years making it glitter. "Now, 
jeweled flashlight, succeed!" 

But it does not shine! It is only a diamond- 
mounted failure. 

"You are on the right track," says a solid cit- 
izen in juiceless tones. ' ( You simply haven 't gone 
far enough to make it a success. It lives in too 
poor a part of the city. Nothing could succeed 
down there in Tin Can Alley. You must get it 
into a big house up among our best people. Put 
it in a big stone house with a landscape garden 
up on Millionaire Row, and as the people pass 



THE BUSINESS OF SUCCEEDING 17 

they will say, ' There is one of the most successful 
flashlights in this city. Just think ! It came here 
just a dollar brass flashlight, and now see where 
it lives !' " 

"0, thank you, Mr. Solid Citizen. I am only 
in middle life now, and I'll yet be able to put it 
in the big house. ' ' I toil my declining years get- 
ting the big house. I get it into the mansion, get 
it into " Who's Who" and what's what, with a 
flock of servants and flunkies. "See, Millionaire 
Row flashlight, what a grand success you are!" 

But it does not shine! It is only a big-house 
failure ! 

I am old and worn-out. Every hope I had for 
my flashlight is blasted. Life is a failure. I have 
nothing more to live for. Life is just delusion, 
just mockery, just pursuit and never possession. 
Let me die ! 



Along comes a little bird. "What's the matter, 
man? Why these tears?" 

' ' Life is a failure. All these years I have tried 
to make my flashlight a success. I have put gold 
bands around it, set diamonds over it, put it in a 
big house, but it does not shine. I have taken it 
to all the specialists. There is no hope." 

"Why don't you press the button!" 



18 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

Of course, I pay no attention to such a simple- 
minded creature. What could it possibly know 
about success! But the idea haunts me. Is there 
a button to it? What? That! One day I press 
the button! 

IT SHINES ! It is a success ! 

Well! Well! It was so simple I missed it. 
Why didn't that little bird come along years ago? 
Now the light pours forth. It is a success any- 
where — a success in brass, a success in gold, in 
jewels; a success in Tin Can Alley, a success on 
Millionaire Row. For its success isn't what is 
outside of it, but what is inside of it coming out. 



"Shine Your Light!" 

Here is the story of Big Business — and of Little 
Business. I need not take a lot of time explaining. 
You have it now. 

We are all flashlights of different kinds — big 
and little. Each of us is equipped with batteries 
of talents and abilities. Our Big Business is to 
shine. But instead of pressing the button, most 
people spend their lives trying to get the gold 
bands, the diamonds and the big houses. 

" Press the button!" "Let your light shine," 
said the Master. That does not mean to let your 



THE BUSINESS OF SUCCEEDING 19 

light shine when yon feel like it. The original 
Greek pnts it imperatively. It is a command. 
' ' Shine your light ! ' ' It isn 't optional. We must 
make our batteries shine. 

So, then, Big Business is the business of mak- 
ing our light shine. Big Business is the busi- 
ness of being what we are created to be. All other 
busy-ness is Little Business. Big Business is In- 
side Business. Little Business is Outside Busi- 
ness. Big Business is Being. Little Business is 
Getting. 

Success is shining. There is no other. It alone 
brings happiness. It is for everybody, every- 
where. PRESS THE BUTTON! 



All Seeking' Happiness 

Happiness is the universal goal. 

We got up this morning to be happy. We often 
think that to lie in bed would be greater happi- 
ness, but if we do, the neighbors talk about us, and 
business suffers. So we average it and get up. 

Most of us are happier going with the majority 
than being non-conformists. 

I used to dream that some day I'd be so rich 
I'd wind my alarm-clock and set it to go off early, 
and then when it did go off, I would smash it with 



20 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

my shoe and sleep all day. But I am learning as 
I look around at the rich and retired., who do not 
have to get up with alarm-clocks, that most of the 
happy people do have to get up when some bell 
rings. 

I used to worry when a boy about having to 
wash my face every morning — and so far around, 
clear back of my ears ! I am learning that I have 
to do so many things I at first did not want to do, 
in order that I may be able to do the things I do 
like to do. 

We all have to build considerable track to get 
over to our playgrounds and to fence them in and 
buy ball-bats. 



Whatever we do, we are doing it to be happy, 
whether we realize it or not. 

Some people take a cold bath every morning to 
be happy. I often think many of them get most 
of their happiness telling other people about it. 
There be other tribes and peoples who believe the 
way to be happy is to boycott all bathtubs. 

The boy is playing his cornet to be happy. The 
neighbors are praying for him to quit to be happy. 

The boy wants to be a man to be happy. The 
man wants to be a boy to be happy. 



THE BUSINESS OF SUCCEEDING 21 

The father says to his son, "My child, come 
hither !" The child obeys — to be happy! 

Just look down the street. Look at the throng 
of men, women, children pushing, crowding, el- 
bowing, jostling, struggling to be happy. Most 
of them trying to beat the rest somewhere to find 
happiness. Fathers, mothers, children, preachers, 
peddlers, policemen, tramps, travelers, butchers, 
bakers, candlestick-makers. A million going a 
million different ways to be happy. One is hurry- 
ing home to be happy. Another is hurrying away 
from home to be happy. One is hunting somebody 
to be happy. Another is dodging somebody to 
be happy. One is seeking employment to be happy. 
Another is avoiding employment to be happy. 

One is going to the country to be happy. An- 
other is going to the city to be happy. One is 
going to heaven, another is going to hell, to be 
happy. One is lying to others, another is lying to 
himself, to be happy. 



I look over the old family album and marvel 
as I study the daguerreotypes of one generation, 
the tintypes of another and the platinum prints 
and kodaks of yet another — marvel at what hu- 
manity has suffered in the name of style to be 
happy. We have pinched our feet and stretched 



22 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

our necks and punctured our purses to be happy. 
We have worn gauze in winter and furs in dog- 
days to be happy. I look at the stovepipe hats 
of Lincoln's day, and at the old-fashioned hoops 
that were happiness of the gentler sex. They 
looked like haystacks or circus-tents. Mother 
looked like an umbrella — opened. Daughter to- 
day looks like an umbrella — closed! 

Daughter would be very unhappy today to wear 
what yesterday would have thrilled her with hap- 
piness. "Better be out of the world than out of 
style." 

The maiden puts powder on her nose and shoots 
her coy glances to be happy. The soldier puts the 
powder in his gun and shoots steel-nosed bullets 
to be happy. The captive surrenders to either 
to be happy! 

What we call civilization is just the network 
of activities we have imposed upon barbarism 
with the idea of making the barbarians happier. 
And laws are merely the rules the majority be- 
lieve are necessary to secure happiness. The 
stone age individualist did what he pleased to be 
happy. Now he does what the majority pleases 
that the majority may be happy. 

The preacher who preaches the happiness of 
right living is winning the world. The oldtime 
hellfire dispenser of the doctrine of unhappiness 
and fear faces emptying pews. 



THE BUSINESS OF SUCCEEDING 23 

Even the man who does not believe happiness 
possible for him goes right on carrying his bur- 
dens to be happy. He realizes he would be more 
unhappy to drop them on his toes. If he ends 
his life, is it not because he believes he will be 
"happier dead than alive?" 



Outside or Inside of Us 

Yes, we are all seeking happiness, whether we 
know it or not. 

There are 'only two places in which to seek hap- 
piness — Outside of us and Inside of us. 

That is, in Getting or in Being. 

This feverish, struggling, unsatisfied old world 
goes on hunting happiness in a million different 
places, but they all divide into two classes — Out- 
siders and Insiders : Little Businessmen and Big 
Businessmen. 



CHAPTEB II 
THE OUTSIDERS 
The Little Business of Getting 

ALMOST everybody is trying to get some- 
thing to be happy. The people are trying 
to get the gold bands, the diamonds, the 
big house on the outside of the flashlight, instead 
of pressing the button. 

They let just enough light shine to decorate 
their outside. They try to outshine their neigh- 
bors, and they become out-shine instead of in- 
shine. 

i i "When I can just get that I '11 be happy ! ' ' And 
they go on trying to get a big house, a farm, a 
fortune; trying to get into the papers, into so- 
ciety, into office. 

They get into the big house and it becomes just 
as monotonous as the little house — more monoto- 
nous, for there is more of it to get monotonous ! 
They find that lobster salad gets just as taste- 
less as mush and milk to their fevered palates. 
They find that silk gets as hateful as calico on a 
discontented, disappointed back. They find that 
managing a million is more trouble than manag- 

24 



THE OUTSIDERS 25 

ing a mule. They find that every vote that puts 
them into office is not a boost but a burden — a lia- 
bility, not an asset. 

And the siren Goddess of Get says, ' ' Get more ! 
You'll find happiness when you get more!" 



"George, where are all these people going ?" 
a traveler asked a porter on a California-bound 
train loaded with tourists. 

"Doan' know, boss, but I tink dey's goin' from 
where dey are to where dey ain't.' ' 

The feeling grows upon me that this fever to 
get things is just "goin' from where dey are to 
where dey ain't" — moving from the Inside to the 
Outside. 



Only One Happy Getting 

Yes, we must all get things — get them, not for 
the sake of getting, but as wires to conduct the 
flow of our batteries of talents from the Inside to 
the Outside. Keep them insulated, else they will 
shock, benumb and kill ! 

Get them as the boy gets the ball-bat — so that 
he can play a better game of ball. Get them as 



26 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

the carpenter gets tools — so that he can better 
build. Get them as Uncle Sam got his billions in 
the Liberty Loan — not that he could become the 
richest nation, but that he could "make the world 
safe for democracy. " 

Get the nice clothes and the new house — not to 
gratify a selfish pride but that a beautiful Inside 
may be reflected in a beautiful Outside. 

All other getting is like piling up snowballs. 
We press them to our bosom and they freeze our 
heart. And then melt ! 



Childhood Confessions 

When asked, "In what state were you born?" 
I generally reply, "In two states — in a state of 
nudity and a state of discontent. ' ' 

I began to cry for things outside of me with 
my first wail. I was so unhappy. I wanted every- 
thing I saw. I kept telling them I wasn't happy. 
* ' Wah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah ! ' ' That meant, 
" I 'm not ha-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-appy ! ' ' 

I did not speak their language. The barbarians 
around my crib worked night and day to make 
me happy by making me more unhappy. They 
handled me, dandled me, dangled me, strangled 
me, scrambled me, addled me, paddled me, and 



THE OUTSIDERS 27 

perpetrated other loving atrocities I can't remem- 
ber. There was something doing every minute. 

One day I saw something wiggle at the other 
end of the cradle. It was a little pink thing that 
stuck out from under the covers. "Ah! What 
is that? I want that. Here, you barbarians, get 
me my toe. I want my toe. I'll be happy if I 
can get that pink thing that wiggles down there. ' ' 

Nobody got me my toe. I had to get it myself. 
It was hard work getting my toe. It has always 
been hard for me to make both ends meet ! 

At last I got my toe. I put it in the only pocket 
a baby has. But my toe didn't taste half as good 
as I thought it would. I got tired of it right away 
after getting it. 

1 ' Wah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah ! ' ' 



Then I saw something shiny right up there 
thru the window. "Ah! That is what I want — 
that shiny thing up there. I want the moon. Here, 
you barbarians, get me the moon. Wah-ah-ah- 
ah-ah!" 

Nobody got me the moon. I had to get it my- 
self. It was hard work getting the moon. I would 
reach for it, but the old moon would move away. 
I didn't get the moon at all. I reached so far out 



28 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

of the crib I fell out and bumped my head on the 
floor. 

I didn't get the moon — I got a sore head. I 
have seen so many people since that time — so 
much larger babies, too! — crying and struggling 
to get the moon to be happy. I have never seen 
any of them get the moon, but I have seen a lot 
of sore-heads! 



And I remember one day when I was " right 
smart of. a boy" (with the accent on the " smart") 
I was going with father thru the woods back of 
our cabin home. I saw a queer, round thing 
hanging to a limb of a tree over our heads. It 
looked like it was made of gray paper, and about 
a foot in diameter. 

' i 0, father, look at that round gray-paper thing 
up there. I want that. Let me get that." 

Father was not interested at all. He took me 
by the arm and led me away. "Have respect for 
dumb brutes, my boy. You don 't want that. You 
wouldn't know what to do with that thing if you 
had it. You would be very sorry if you got it. 
And furthermore, I forbid you to get it. ' ' 

That settled it. I got it. What I am telling 
you now is one of the warmest, keenest, most vivid 
memories of my boyhood. I can never forget that 

e 



THE OUTSIDEES 29 

gray-paper ball that I got that day. Father went 
away and I kept thinking about it. "Father is 
a nice old man, bnt he isn't up-to-date. He doesn't 
know what a boy needs nowadays to make him 
happy. I just got to get that gray-paper thing 
hanging up in that tree and find out what it is." 
I went back to that tree. There it was hanging 
up there on the limb. "I am going to be very 
happy. Watch me get happy. ' ' I got a long pole 
and joyously jabbed it up into that grav-paper 
ball. It fell! 



Father was right! I shall not tell you what 
happened. I want you to be happy. I do not want 
this lecture to be so exciting. It was a painful 
subject for a long time. I did not want it. I 
did not know what to do with it after I got it. I 
was very sorry I got it! 

It was a hornets ' nest ! 



These three childhood memories tell me about 
all the world has ever gotten on the Outside. If 
we don't get it, we have a sore head. If we do 
get it we soon get tired of it — or get stung! 



30 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

Hunting for " Carcassonne" 

So the cynic says, "Happiness is in pursuit, 
not in possession!" How ardently we have de- 
bated that in our literary societies! So the poor 
old French peasant sighed his life thru in that 
wonderful poem, "Carcassonne," by Gustave 
Nadaud : 

"I'm .growing old; just threescore years, 

In wet and dry, in dust and mire, 
I've sweated, never getting near 

Fulfillment of my heart's desire. 
Ah, well I see that bliss below 

'Tis heaven's will to grant to none; 
Harvest and vintage come and go — 

I 've never got to Carcassonne ! " 

Thru the years this peasant toiled and dreamed 
of the happiness in store for him if he could just 
see the gay city and the people of Carcassonne 
"five long leagues" away. 

' ' So sighed a peasant of Limoux, 

A worthy neighbor, bent and worn ; 
Ho, friend, quoth I, I'll go with you, 

We'll sally forth tomorrow morn! 
And true enough, away we hied, 

But when our goal was almost won, 
God rest his soul, the good man died — 

He never got to Carcassonne!" 



THE OUTSIDERS 31 

Outsiders always die before they get to "Car- 
cassonne." Insiders find " Carcassonne" comes 
to them. It is all around them, and they see it 
as they press the button and let their light shine. 

The peasant of Limoux would not have been as 
happy in "Carcassonne" as he was down in his 
vineyard in the valley, for he would have been a 
misfit there. He was "goin' from where dey are 
to where dey ain't." 

The old cow is a rank Outsider when she stands 
in a good pasture and looks yearningly over the 
fence into the cornfield. "0, if I could just get 
over the fence into ' Carcassonne/ I would be the 
happiest cow in the world. ' ' So Sister Cow leaves 
her real "Carcassonne," jumps the fence, and be- 
comes the unhappiest cow in the county. 

The first piece of pie tastes the best ! 

The meek and patient mule has been jeered at 
and joked about. But take off your hat to the 
mule. He is not an Outsider. He is a Big Busi- 
ness mule. He can be in an ocean of food, but he 
never eats more than enough to satisfy his hun- 
ger. Nothing can induce him to overeat. You 
never saw a dyspeptic mule. 



Each Envies the Other 
"Carcassonne" is written on the faces of the 



32 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

hurrying crowd in the city. "C areas sonne" is 
the guide-post along the country road. The rich 
man in the Game of Get rides thru the country 
in his car. " There is the happy man," he says 
as he looks over into the field where a farmer with 
his sleeves rolled up is hard at work. " There is 
the happy man. He has the carefree life. He 
lives in the fresh air and sunshine. It is a dog's 
life I live shut up in my office. 0, I wish I were 
over in that field where I could be happy ! ' ' 

And that farmer over in the field, if he is also 
an Outsider, straightens the kinks out of his back 
and looks over at the man in the big car. ' i There 
is the happy man. He has the carefree life. He 
has nothing to do but ride around, wear good 
clothes, live in the city and have everything that 
money can buy. It is a dog's life I live on this 
old farm. If I were only over in that car I'd be 
happy.' ' 

1 « Button ! Button ! Who 's got the button f ' ' 



This is why we have to have so many shows 
specially designed for the " tired business man." 
This Outside business makes them tired. 

And speaking of shows, did you ever study the 
eager, expectant look of the crowd roped off wait- 
ing their turn to get into the theatre when the 



THE OUTSIDEKS 33 

fourteenth episode of " Blood and Thunder" 
was grinding? They just know when they can 
get inside they will be happy. And the crowd in- 
side just know when they can get outside they will 
be happy! 



The most peevish, unhappy baby in the world 
is the one that gets continually entertained and 
humored. On the other side of the fence lived a 
rich boy who was showered with beautiful, costly 
toys. He threw them around and broke them. He 
had little joy in them. I used to think if I could 
only have one of them. I would be very happy. 
I had no "boughten" toys; all my toys I had 
to make myself. One day his father gave him 
the most beautiful toy boat I ever saw. How I 
envied him ! I whittled out a little boat with my 
jack-knife and made a rag sail for it. I had a 
lot of joy sailing my little boat. I had made it 
myself. 

Presently the other boy threw his big boat away. 
" Gimme your boat," he said. "You have more 
fun with that kind. ' ' 

Just so, the unhappiest people are the ones who 
hunt outside for it. The unhappiest people are 
the ones who have every want gratified, who over- 
work every nerve of pleasure, who exhaust every 
sensation. 



34 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

It is fine to have good food, good clothes, good 
homes. These things make us more efficient and 
comfortable. But being comfortable is not being 
happy. Some of the people most comfortably sit- 
uated are the unhappiest, for they are Outsiders. 
And some of the people most uncomfortably sit- 
uated are the happiest, for they are Insiders. It 
is fine to fill the stomach, but that does not nec- 
essarily fill the heart! 



Old King- Got-It-All 

You remember him? He got it all — all on the 
Outside. He had his palaces, his jewels, his robes, 
his feasts, his music, his fame, and all the ma- 
chinery of his kingdom to make him happy on the 
Outside. 

But he had nothing on the Inside. He was the 
most selfish, vain creature in his kingdom, there- 
fore, the unhappiest. He was so unhappy that he 
offered a reward to anybody who could cheer him 
up. He bade his chefs prepare him more won- 
drous feasts, but they only filled him with dys- 
pepsia. He ordered his royal opera company to 
sing more loudly, " There is no king but Got-It- 
All," and yet his grouch grew. 

One day King Got-It-All called his soothsayers, 



THE OUTSIDERS 35 

magicians, counselors, astrologers, zoologers, psy- 
chologers and the other grand highs of his palace 
together. "I am so unhappy I cannot live. I 
haven't been happy for years. I haven't smiled 
for ages. I am going to die of a broken heart. 
Nobody ever was so unhappy as King Got-It-All. 
But you have to die first. Hearken ! I give you 
only one more chance to live. Come back here at 
high noon tomorrow with a cure for my unhappi- 
ness, something that will bring the roses back to 
my cheeks, or, by my halidom, off come your 
heads ! Grind the royal axe ! ' ' 

Next day, after a sleepless night, the entire 
administration came back to cure King Got-It- 
All. One by one they appeared before him with 
a new cure for his unhappiness. Yet one by one 
he waved them aside. 

There was only one left. He did not know what 
to say, for every known remedy for unhappiness 
had been offered him. 

" Little runt down there at the end of the line, 
what have you to say before we ring up the 
hearses?" roared the sorrowing monarch. 

"0, king," he replied in the inspiration born 
of desperation, "I think if you would hunt thru 
your kingdom and find a perfectly contented man, 
and wear his shirt, I believe you would be happy. ' ' 

"Wear his shirt! 0, aggregation of knavish 
mutts, this is too much! But just to show you 



36 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

before we all die that I tried to save you, I'll 
do it. Hold the hearses! Ho! Find me a per- 
fectly contented man. I want his shirt.' ' 

They telephoned. No — they didn't have tele- 
phones. But whatever they did, they did a lot of 
it. The king's messengers went everywhere hunt- 
ing a contented man. They couldn 't find one ! It 
sounds like America, but it wasn't — it was Ethi- 
opia, or Oklahoma, or some place away off. At 
last they did find a contented man, tho he was a 
slave. He didn't take the papers and didn't know 
about this hullabaloo. 

"Ah! We have found you at last!" they 
shouted in triumph. ' ' Come right along, sir, im- 
mediately. We have been hunting for you for 
days to make the king happy." 

They led the slave with great rejoicing up the 
king's highway. The people shout, the newspa- 
pers get out extras. They have found the con- 
tented man at last, the king is going to be happy 
and the price of living is coming down! 

They lead the slave up into the palace — up into 
the presence of the king to make him happy ! 



This story is so good this far I would rather 
not go on with it. 

But the slave failed to make the king happy. 
He had no shirt ! 



TfiE OUTSIDERS 37 

I do not know whether this ever happened or 
not. I read it out of the same book you have at 
home. But I know it is very true. The slave had 
nothing on the Outside to make him happy. It 
must have been on the Inside. 

I dislike this chapter just as much as you do. 
I am so glad we are thru with it. It is like going 
thru a hospital or a morgue. But we had to go 
thru it to be honest with this subject, for it is 
the path most of us travel in our own lives. 

Now let us go over into the real "Big Business." 

"Press the button!" 



CHAPTER HI 
THE INSIDERS 

The Big" Business of Being 

"li yTID PLEASURES and palaces, sadly I 

I y J roam. Be it ever so humble, there's no 
place like home." Ah, John Howard 
Payne, yon have spoken in "Home, Sweet Home" 
the heart of humanity ! 

Sooner or later all of us get tired of being Out- 
siders. Sooner or later we weary of the chase 
for painted bubbles and snowballs. Sooner or 
later every Prodigal Son wearies of the husks and 
turns homeward — turns back to the Inside, the 
only real home. 

As a boy I read the story of Aladdin and his 
wonderful lamp. Aladdin rubbed his lamp and 
the genii come to do his bidding. They did every- 
thing he commanded. Nothing was impossible to 
them. They turned the world into wonderland. 
They wove enchantments all around him. 

' l 0, 1 want to be Aladdin ! Where can I get an 
Aladdin lamp?" 

"Child! There isn't any such thing. That is 
just a fairy story, ' ' everybody would tell me. 



38 



THE INSIDEES 39 

But I believed it was true. It seemed just like 
all true things. I always believed it true. And 
now I know it is true. I know why the oriental 
tale has lived these ages — it is founded on truth. 

Aladdin's wonderful lamp is the flashlight we 
have been talking about all along! You and I 
are Aladdins! Our wonderful lamp is the lamp 
of our real being. As we press the button — rub 
the lamp — the light shines forth from the batter- 
ies of our being and transforms this tired, strug- 
gling, unsatisfied, hungry, worried, disappointed, 
sordid old world into a wonderland. Wherever 
we live, wherever we labor, as we let our light 
shine forth, it enchants every prospect. 

We become kings and queens, lords of creation, 
our lives and paths radiant. And the wonderful 
lamp of our talents never exhausts with rubbing, 
but grows and brightens and strengthens. 

And this world becomes a playground! 



Players and Workers 

See those children playing over there. They 
are having such a good time. They are working 
harder than grownups, but they call it play. They 
run their little legs off, they strain their little 
bodies, they yell their little throats hoarse, they 



40 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

fall and bump themseves hard enough to shatter 
every bone in their bodies. But they are made of 
rubber! They drop asleep "all tired out" — tired 
of swinging, running, jumping, climbing — tired 
of play! 

See those men on the other side of the road. 
They are working. You can tell with the naked 
eye they are working. They are having such a 
hard time of it. The clock runs too fast for the 
children at play ; it runs too slow for the men at 
work. Yet the men are not working as hard as 
the children. They are merely having a harder 
time. They are watching the clock and working 
by the meter. They will fall asleep with the feel- 
ing they have a very hard life. 

What is the difference between playing and 
working? The children are getting their pay 
while they do it. The men think they will get their 
pay after they do it. 

When we play, we get our pay every day. When 
we work, we are never paid. We think we are 
going to get our pay Saturday night in our pocket. 
But we are only paid in our hearts — in the joy 
of doing. We are never paid in our pockets. 
Neither workers nor idlers are ever paid. 

Getting money isn't getting pay. We take 
money for our work that we can go on working, 
just as the engine burns coal that it can go on run- 
ning. We take money for our work to keep the 



THE INSIDERS 41 

books balanced. We take it to be honest. We 
take it to be just to the other fellow. We may 
have to sue him to be just to him and teach him 
honesty. Teach him to value things. 

Getting joy out of our work, is turning our 
work into play. 



See that little boy playing horse with a broom- 
stick. See that one playing he is a railroad train 
— choo ! choo ! choo ! One is playing store, one is 
building a house out of sticks. One little girl is 
making mud pies on broken dishes, another is put- 
ting a rag dollbaby to sleep, with all the cares of 
a household upon her. 0, what fun they are 
having ! 

But see there is a man driving a real horse and 
saying, l l It 's a dog's life I lead. ' ' There is a man 
keeping a real store and calling himself a slave. 
There is a man building a real house and saying, 
"My boy shall never be a carpenter !" There is 
a woman in a kitchen, another rocking a cradle, 
both saying, "I am beating my wings against a 
cage. ' ' 

They have quit playing ! 

If the boy gets so much fun driving a broom- 
stick horse, why shouldn't he have more fun as 
a grownup boy driving a real horse? If a boy 



42 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

gets so much fun building a house of sticks, why 
shouldn't he get more fun out of building a real 
house with real tools ? If a little girl gets so much 
fun out of making mud pies on broken dishes, 
why shouldn't she get more fun out of being in 
a real kitchen making pumpkin pies and apple 
pies? Yes, if she has so much joy putting a rag 
dollbaby to sleep, why shouldn't she have more 
joy beside a real cradle? 

Why shouldn't we find the grownup world just 
a grownup, happier playground? The tools just 
bigger, finer toys? Aladdin, rub the lamp! 



Work the Opposite of Play 

Play is expressing ourself ; work is repressing 
ourself — repressing, depressing, oppressing, com- 
pressing, suppressing! 

Play is putting joy into life ; work is taking joy 
out of life. 

Play is LOVING to do things; work is HAV- 
ING to do things. 

Play is living today; work is living tomorrow. 

That is why we love to tell about "when I was 
a child." That is why unhappy old people "wish 
I was a child again." Their light has gone out. 

What wonderful memories we all cherish of 



THE INSIDEES 43 

our childhood playgrounds ! No matter if it was 
a dingy back alley or backwoods, it was a wonder- 
ful place. So was our home an enchanted palace, 
even if made of logs, for Aladdin's lamp lighted 
it. No modern illuminant, be it ever so brilliant, 
can ever light like Aladdin's lamp. 

What wonderful memories of the precious min- 
utes at recess! An hour at noon seemed like a 
few minutes. We never could get time enough 
to play. 0, the glad memories of marbles and 
ball and jumping! Of "blackman," "shinny," 
" hide-and-go-seek' ' ("One! two! three! for 
me!")! Of "blindman's buff," "prisoners' 
base, " " aunty-over, " " crack-the-whip ' ' ! And of 
the gentler games of "button," "ring around 
the rosey," "London bridge is falling down,"! 
Then the "kissing games" at the "parties" and 
"taffy-pulls"! Any of us could write a book 
about the "old swimmin' hole," the fishing, the 
skating, the hay-rides and the sled-rides. 

On our playground rich and poor, high and low, 
blacksmith's child and banker's child were on an 
equality — if the home influence didn't intrude. 
All played a hard game to win. We were fierce, 
happy competitors, but the moment anybody fell, 
all the rest of us sprang to help him up. 

The child's playground is the perfect democ- 
racy. 

Let us make the world just a bigger playground 



44 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LITE 

for bigger boys and girls. Let us make the homes, 
farms, shops, stores, offices, mills, mines, clubs, 
churches just parts of the playground and finer 
playthings. We can as we learn to play the games 
we are fitted for — and keep selfishness out. 

When we stop playing we are not growing up, 
we are shriveling. 



" Become as a Little Child" 

When I see children at play my heart beats 
faster. I used to teach school, and I was a fail- 
ure at it, for I did not love the children. In my 
early days of lecturing, I had so much trouble 
with the children. The little rascals would get 
on the front row and wiggle and squirm. They 
did not have the proper appreciation of my jewels 
of wisdom and my priceless flowers of eloquence ! 
I would pause and look sternly down into the 
kindergarten hotbed of sedition below me. "You 
are bad children and I am ashamed of you. Get 
still down there or I'll have the ushers throw out 
every little brat!" 

Of course, they got still! They did not— they 
wiggled more than ever. I was convinced that 
this was proof of their original sin. I know bet- 
ter now — I know the fault was with myself. 



THE INSIDERS 45 

One hot day I was trying to lecture in the after- 
noon at a chantauqua when the children in the 
front row were especially "bad." I said in my 
desperation, "You children get still and don't 
get off that bench ! When I am thru I'll take you 
over to the ice cream stand and buy you each a 
dish of ice ere am.' ' 

There was a great calm on that bench. The six 
little rascals looked up expectantly. A minute 
later there were fifteen little rascals down on that 
bench looking up expectantly. Two minutes later 
there were twenty-five looking up expectantly. 
Then they tiptoed up from all parts of the house 
to get on that front bench. The word spread up 
town, and I think every child in the town came 
down and got on that bench. It began to look like 
a Sunday School just before Christmas where 
they are going to have a tree. Did you ever see 
a branch where the bees have swarmed? Well, 
that bench swarmed with kids piled up, all look- 
ing up expectantly ! 

And I was aggrieved at kid nature. I cut my 
lecture short and petulantly took the entire juve- 
nile population of a Missouri township over to the 
ice cream works. I had never before known how 
many thousand kids could balance on one bench. 
They hadn't played fair with me! 

Today that is one of the funniest memories of 



46 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

my life. Today I have a joy in taking "de gang" 
to the ice cream works. That is what ice cream 
is for! Today one of the real picnics of my life 
is to grab up a bunch of " newsies' ' and take them 
into a swell hotel, take them right into the dining- 
room past the horrified head-waiter, take posses- 
sion of a table, and stuff them. I like to watch 
the roast turkey bulge up even into their necks. I 
like to watch them look at the finger-bowl and won- 
der what to do with it. I like to watch the over- 
dressed dames stare at my menagerie, and watch 
my pets approach the blissful state where they 
say, "I kin chaw, but I can't swaller no more.'' 



One of my real joys now is to see the front row 
look up as I try to lecture. They generally listen. 
We are great pals. My best audience is on the 
front row. I am going to teach school again, and 
I shall succeed at it, for I have gotten religion — 
a little more! — and am learning to love a little 
child. That is only the first step in loving. It is 
easy to love a little child, for they are so lovable. It 
is much harder to love grownup children when 
they get "sot in their ways" and their meanness 
sometimes sticks out on them like the points on 
a barbwire fence. 



THE INSIDEES 47 

We "old folks" are just children grown more 

selfish. 

# * # 

"My Father's Business" 

A father, a mother and a twelve-year-old hoy 
once went up to Jerusalem to attend the Feast of 
the Passover. After they had "fulfilled the 
days," the father and mother started back home 
with the caravan. They traveled a day before 
the father looked around and said, "Where is 
our boy?" 

He rushed back to the mother. "Mother, where 
is our boy?" 

"Why, father, I haven 't seen him all day. I 
thought he was up there with you all this time. 
Why, where is our boy?" 

"Bless me, mother, I haven't seen him since we 
left Jerusalem. I thought he was back here with 
you. ' ' 

"Where is our boy? Have you seen anything 
of a twelve-year-old boy?" They go distractedly 
up and down the caravan asking it. Nobody had 
seen him. They hurry back the day's journey to 
Jerusalem. I see them going up and down Main 
Street wringing their hands and peering into 
every child's face. 

"Where, 0, where is our boy? Haven't any of 
you seen a twelve-year-old boy about so high?" 



48 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

I see them go to the movies. I see them go to the 
ball game. I see them go to the swimming-hole. 
But their boy is not there. 

At last they go to the place where many would 
least expect to find a normal twelve-year-old boy, 
because so many have tried to make it the least 
inviting place for him. They go to church. 
' ' Why ! there he is ! There is our boy — right there 
in the temple talking with the doctors, the elders 
and the bishops. 

"Ah! We have found you at last! Why, son, 
you have given us the scare of our lives. We have 
been looking for you everywhere. * Why have you 
dealt with us thus 1 ' ' ' Possibly being interpreted, 
' ' You just wait till we get you home ! ' ' 

But the boy who had tarried behind in the midst 
of the doctors, "both hearing them and asking 
questions,' ' replied, "Wist ye not that I must be 
about my Father's business !" 

What wonderful sermons and books have been 
written about that reply! It seems as tho the 
fabric of Christendom has been woven about it. 

What was "my Father's business"? I am 
reverently calling it Big Business. His business 
on earth was to show humanity how to be what 
we are created to be — how to realize our real 
i ' career, ' ' how to play. And as fast as we get into 
this Big Business, "thy kingdom come" is re- 
alized. 



THE INSIDERS 49 

All Nature in Big Business 

Look again at this flashlight. The batteries 
within call to be be used. Letting them shine is 
its success. Natural development is letting our 
capabilities shine forth. The little child natu- 
rally responds to the calls from within. When it 
kicks, it is responding to the kick battery within. 
When it shouts, it is responding to the shout bat- 
tery. 

All nature is responding to the impulses from 
within. That is why we call all this world around 
us " nature,' ' because it is being natural — being 
what it is planned to be. 

Every bird is a success, just naturally being 
what it was planned to be. I have never seen a 
bird work. I have never met an unsuccessful 
bird. I have never heard a bird say, "Life is a 
failure. I never had any chance like other birds. 
If I had been born in New York or Paris I might 
have amounted to something, but stuck away out 
here in the backwoods nothing could succeed." 

No! Every bird in the backwoods is just as 
successful as the bird in New York or Paris. It 
sings just as sweetly and happily in the back- 
woods where nobody hears it as where the multi- 
tude listens. That is its success — singing and fly- 
ing. It is full of sing batteries and fly batteries. 
If it should try to blossom, it would be a failure, 



50 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

for it has no blossom batteries. Blackbird, white- 
bird, redbird, bluebird, jaybird, woodpecker — all 
are just as successful, each one being itself, each 
one singing for the joy of singing. Eaise its sal- 
ary and it could not be any more successful. 



Every flower is a success, just blossoming. It 
has the blossom batteries. It does not try to fly, 
for it has no fly batteries, and does not try to sing, 
for it has no sing batteries. Out in the backwoods 
the flower is just as successful as in the city con- 
servatory. In the heart of a Florida cypress 
swamp I have come upon moss-carpeted wonder- 
lands full of flowers and orchids "going to waste" 
that New York would rave over. Up in the Al- 
pine snows I have found the edelweiss as beauti- 
ful as the hothouse blossoms. 

The sun shines. He is a grand success at shin- 
ing, for he is full of shine batteries, and just lets 
them go. He does not try to cackle, for he has no 
cackle batteries. The hen cackles. She is full 
of cackle batteries. But she does not try to shine, 
for if she should she would wail, "Nobody loves 
me!" She has no shine batteries. The meek and 
lowly hen is a greater success than the mighty 
sun at cackling ! So each of us is the greatest suc- 
cess in the universe letting our own particular 
light shine. 



THE INSIDERS 51 

Nobody can steal our success. 

Nobody loves unnatural efforts, but everybody 
loves the natural and unaffected. When will hu- 
manity learn that! 



The eagle soars because he has soar batteries. 
He does not bray, for he has no bray batteries. 
One bray out of an eagle would fix him. The 
proud bird of our country would have to come 
right down off our banner. 

The mule brays. Bless his patient heart, he 
is a grand success at braying, for he is full of 
bray batteries, but if he should try to soar, the 
price of mules would come down. 

The grasshopper hops, for he has wonderful 
hop batteries, but he does not try to be an ele- 
phant. The elephant does not try to jump like 
a grasshopper, for if he did he would surely muss 
up the map! 

The most successful church building would be 
the greatest failure as a boiler factory. A loco- 
motive is a grand success at pulling trains, for 
it is full of pull batteries, but it is a total failure 
as a lawn-mower. Anybody who has ever had 
his lawn mowed by a locomotive never wants it 
done that way again. 

Silly talk, you say? Yes, that is why I am say- 



52 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

ing it. Is it not easy to see what success is for 
the flashlight, and for all things in nature, but 
hard to see what success is for humanity! Hu- 
man beings try to be monkeys instead of men, 
when they have no monkey batteries. They try 
to be parrots and peacocks. They try to be pigs, 
and they cannot even be successful pigs. 



I have read many books on " Success in Life 
and How to Attain It. ' ' I have listened to learned 
lectures on this entrancing theme, some of them 
given by people who were not overly successful 
themselves. I have often felt that if I had to do 
half the things they advise — had to observe all 
the wise maxims of the "successful" who write 
the pages of "do's" and "don't's," I would say, 
"Bury me tomorrow. It is too hard work to 
live." 

Then I look over nature, I look at "dumb 
brutes," I look at children at play, and there 
comes a new inspiration. I never see a bird look 
into the Encyclopedia Britannica to know whether 
to fly or to blossom. Something tells it what to 
do, and it never falters nor worries about "mis- 
taking its calling." 

Something keeps telling you and me what to 
do. The batteries of our being keep calling us 
to press the buttons as fast as they develop. 



THE INSIDERS 53 

Find Your ''Thimbles!" 

We used to play a game when I was a boy 
called "Find the Thimble." That little game 
tells me more about life success and happiness 
than most of the polysyllabic profundity of the 
books and experts. I wonder how many of you 
in this audience ever played ' ' Find the Thimble ' ' ? 
Hold up your hands, I dare you ! 

What ! All of you know how to play it ! " King 's 
ex!" Let's stop this lecture and have a game of 
"Find the Thimble." 

[Here the lecturer impersonates playing 
''Find the Thimble." Usually the little folks 
in the front rows become very much inter- 
ested. As the game proceeds they shout 
"warmer" and "colder."] 

You know one would be "it," and "it" would 
have to go out of the room and hide his eyes. 
There, you see "it" go out of the room. Now, 
no "peeking"! 

Where '11 we hide the thimble! Look, I am go- 
ing to hide it right here in the middle of the plat- 
form under this handkerchief. Do you all see 
where it is hidden? Now, nobody must tell "it." 

All right, "it," come in and find the thimble. 
Enter "it." Now, I am "it." I do not know 
where the thimble is, but you folks in the audi- 



54 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

ence do know, and you must steer me. I go hunt- 
ing over here (shouts of "colder" from the audi- 
ence). 

What did you mean by "colder"? "Going 
away from the thimble," says somebody. Good! 
That is just the way we played it. It is " colder ' ' 
out that way, and if "it" has any sense, he won't 
go any farther the "cold" way. 

Now I go this way, to the rear of the stage. 
1 ' Colder, ' ' you say again. Well, I get to the mid- 
dle of the stage. "Warmer!" 

What did you mean by "warmer"? "Going 
toward the thimble ! ' ' comes from a chorus of lit- 
tle folks. Yes, that is just the way we played it. 
It is getting "warmer" as I go this way. 

What? "Colder" again? Have I gone too far? 
Where is that "warm" spot? Ah! here it is 
"warmer" again. 

"Hotter!" "Burning up!" You children 
know how to play. I am getting very close to the 
thimble. There, hurrah ! I have found it ! Just 
by going the "warm" way and not going the 
"cold" way. 



We Are All "Called" 

1 i Find the Thimble ' ' is the great game on life 's 
playground. It means find your batteries. Press 



THE INSIDERS 55 

the button. It is following the natural calls. 
When we go the wrong way, try to be or do things 
for which we have no endowment, we are going 
the "cold" way. The world says we are a 
"frost." 

When we go the right way, try to be or do the 
things for which we are fitted, something inside 
says, "Warmer!" We are going the natural 
way. "Warmer! Warmer!" say the voices with- 
in, and the world brightens for us, for Aladdin's 
lamp has commenced to shine. 

When I was a boy a very solemn, sad-faced man 
said to my father, "Brother Parlette, I have a 
call to preach the gospel!" How frightened I 
was! I had a mental picture of God — and I al- 
ways pictured God as an angry old man with long 
whiskers, sitting upon a throne. I had read that 
God is angry with the wicked every day, and I 
knew I was wicked, for so many told me so. They 
told me I would go to jail or be hung as a terrible 
example to other bad preachers' sons. I pic- 
tured God calling sternly over a long-distance 
'phone, "John Alexander Jones, is that you? 
Well, I have called you to preach the gospel. 
Never smile again!" 

I hoped God would never call me. It seemed 
such a dreadful thing. It had to do with dying, 
not with living. I have since discovered that most 
of Brother Jones' call was lazy liver, that is, 



56 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

the solemnity of it, and a false idea about his job. 

And God was calling me all the time, as He is 
calling everybody all the time. Not over some 
mysterious long-distance telephone in doleful 
tones to be sad and solemn, but thru the awaken- 
ing and expression of our faculties to be success- 
ful and happy in shining. We are called to preach 
— and called to peddle peanuts. Called to teach, 
farm, paint, invent, merchandise, philosophize, 
peel potatoes and preside over nations. Just as 
the bird is called to sing, the flower to blossom, 
the fish to swim. 

But the bird is never called to blossom! 

You and I are never called to do something un- 
natural. We are bundles of faculties and talents. 
None of us realize how great and varied are the 
talents we command. These batteries lie silent 
like the chicken in the egg until they develop 
and crack the shells and cry, ' ' Peep ! Peep ! Here 
I am! Use me! Warmer! Press the button!" 
That is the "call." It is a divine thing — that 
Inside call. 



The Call of Samuel 

Is not that story of Samuel in the Bible the ex- 
ample of the perfect call? Why do we so often 
read the Bible with our eyes shut, as tho it were 



THE INSIDERS 

some mysterious book for another age and an- 
other people, instead of a bundle of human 
glimpses of the divinity of Big Business for every 
age and people, that have survived for the very 
truth in them? 

What is there mysterious about the life of this 
lad Samuel, who lives the clean, unperverted life 
in the temple service and does not go out of nights 
with the Eli boys to have a ' ' good time ' ' and have 
a thick head next day? He can hear the voice of 
God because his ear is not dulled with sensuality 
and his heart is not divided by the false calls. 

There he lies in his bed at the close of the day. 
He hears the call, ' * Samuel ! Samuel ! ' ' He runs 
to the bedside of the prophet Eli. "Mr. Eli, here 
I am. What do you want?" 

' i Sammy, what do you mean waking me up this 
way? I didn't call you. Go back to bed. You 
have been dreaming." 

Samuel goes back to bed, and presently the voice 
calls again, "Samuel! Samuel!" Again Samuel 
hurries to the prophet's bedside. "Mr. Eli, now 
I know you called me. What do you want?" 

"No, Sammy," replies the good man, "I didn't 
call you. Go back to bed." Again Samuel goes 
back to bed, saying to himself, "Well, isn't that 
funny? Mr. Eli calls me and doesn't know it. He 
calls in his sleep." 

When the third time the voice calls, "Samuel! 



58 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

Samuel !" and the third time Samuel goes to Eli's 
bedside, you remember Eli was a prophet. I 
wish there were more prophets today. ' ' Samuel, ' ' 
says the old prophet, "I believe God is calling 
you. If you hear that voice again, you say, ' Speak, 
Lord, for thy servant heareth. ' ' ' And when Sam- 
uel again heard that voice, ' i Samuel ! Samuel ! * ' 
he replied, "Speak, Lord, for thy servant 
heareth. ' ' 

Samuel's long career of leadership was the re- 
sult of following that voice as it called to him 
thru the years that followed. 



I believe every time you see the child trying 
to do something, every time you see the child 
reaching for a book, a tool, a brush or an instru- 
ment — reaching, you understand, with a great 
longing to do something with it — the child is hear- 
ing the call, "Samuel! Samuel !" 

I believe every right yearning in the hearts of 
us older ones, is the Samuel call. 

I believe that we can always know whether our 
call is an Inside or an Outside call. The Inside 
call always leads us up to better, cleaner, higher, 
happier living. 

If I were in a pulpit to preach a sermon today, 



THE INSIDERS 59 

I should take for my text, ' ' Commit thy ways unto 
the Lord and He will" help you "find your thim- 
ble." Revised Version! 



Let the Boy Fiddle! 

The other day a mother brought her boy into 
the parlor where I was the " company" and said, 
"Do you think my boy will ever make a violin- 
ist? He plays on that old fiddle from morning 
to night. We just have to hide his fiddle to get 
him to bed. Now if you think he'll ever become 
great or be able to make more money at it than 
helping his father on the farm, I'll let him take 
lessons. If you don't, he has got to quit fooling 
away his time at it and go to something useful. ' ' 

"Useful!" This good mother had gotten 
1 ' practical. ' ' 

I thought of Eli. He didn't say, "Samuel, if 
God calls again, say, ' Speak, Lord, for thy servant 
will hear if you can make me famous or pay me a 
higher salary than Eli pays me here in the temple. 
Submit your proposition and I'll consider it.' " 

That little boy hugging his precious two-dollar 
fiddle raised his wistful eyes to me as tho I held 
his life in my hands. The tears began to grow in 
his eyes. 



60 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

"Mother, there is your answer. Look in his 
face. I don't know whether he will ever make 
a famous violinist. I do not know if he will ever 
make his salt with his fiddle. But I know he will 
make his happiness with it. He will become a 
very successful fiddler. By all means let him play 
the fiddle — and take lessons if you can afford it. 
His fiddle will be his playground. ' ' 

But the mother couldn't just see it that way. 
* * No, if he is just going to make a common, ordi- 
nary fiddler, he has got to stop it. Too many 
fiddlers around here now. ' ' I wonder if that good 
mother would have said to the birds, "If you can't 
sing like the lark you shall not sing at all. ' ' 

I thought of that boy robbed of his fiddle, hating 
the drudgery of the farm work, when it might 
have been part of his playground, if Aladdin had 
been permitted to let his lamp shine. 

I thought of Abraham Lincoln's father throw- 
ing away his book and sending him out to cut corn. 
Little Abe cut the corn and then came back to save 
his father from signing the document deeding 
away his farm, for the boy had learned from the 
book to read what was on the paper the illiterate 
father, in the hands of a designing rogue, could 
not read. Then the father goes out to the hollow 
stump and brings back the treasured volume. 

Don't get too "practical." 



THE INSIDERS 61 

Get Out of Your Cage! 

We see everywhere a world of dull plodders 
and self-denying souls. They say, "My day is 
past. We are living for our children now. ' ' They 
forget that the best way to live for their children 
is to live before their children — set the Big Busi- 
ness example, practice what they preach. Let 
their light shine. 

I see them like pack-horses going thru their 
days like machines. I hear them say, "All my 
life I have wanted to do things, but I was never 
situated so that I could. Now it is too late. I 
am too old. All my life I have beat my wings 
against a cage." 

Who made the cage? Don't you think much of 
this talk is opiate for the accusing conscience? 
That yearning to do things is the Samuel call. 
Much of the "settling down in life" is letting 
down in life. Aladdin is immortal. Press the 
button and illuminate that "cage." Getting the 
light out to the end of the flashlight is just as suc- 
cessful and happy work as projecting it ten miles. 
The success is more in the production than in the 
distribution and marketing. We may shine very 
successfully tho our light never gets beyond the 
home or office walls. 

One of the happy hours of my life was spent 
with a keen-eyed youngster of seventy at a teach- 



62 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

ers ' institute who was just beginning ornamental 
penmanship ! 

What is becoming as a little child ? Going back 
to the little child's life? Is it not more in retain- 
ing the spirit of the little child? The little child 
cries out at the wonder and joy of the new world 
unfolding about it. Should we not cry out at 
the wonder and joy of the larger new world un- 
folding about us? 



Study the plant that goes on leafing, blossom- 
ing, functioning thru its entire life. Stunt it, lop 
off its branches, cripple it, shatter it. The re- 
mains do not crawl off into a pickle- jar in a mu- 
seum and talk about "in my day." What is left 
of that plant does not waste a minute sympathiz- 
ing with itself and saying, ' ' Once I was young and 
fair. They didn't treat me right. It is too late." 
It pulls itself together and goes on being what it 
was built to be, with all the "pep" available. 
And right where it is ! If it cannot grow six feet 
high, it tries to grow six inches high, or it pushes 
upward with its dying breath. 

There is a plant you have seen in the stores 
they call the "resurrection plant." It is a dried 
ball and you can leave it lie around indefinitely 
all dried and withered. But that plant does not 



THE INSIDERS 63 

resign. It holds on to its blue print and merely 
says, "It's a long dry spell. " Yon put it in water 
and it soaks np, unrolls its leaflets and smiles up 
at you all green as tho nothing had happened. 

I am told that they found grains of wheat in the 
mummy casings exhumed in Egypt. Nobody 
knows for sure how many centuries those grains 
lay away with the Pharaohs, never once giving 
up, but singing softly, "There'll come a time." 
The proud and mighty ruler of Egypt gave up 
and mumined, but the humble wheat did not, and 
so it grew joyously in the sunshine of the Twen- 
tieth Century ! 



The Rejuvenation of Napoleon 

For years I drove an old sorrel horse that used 
to look sadly at me out of his watery eyes every 
time I went to hitch him up to the plow or wagon. 
His name was Napoleon Bonaparte, but he acted 
more like he was on St. Helena. We shortened 
his name down to "Bony," which was much more 
fitting, anyhow, for if the bony-part had been 
subtracted from him there wouldn't have been 
much left. 

One day when I had him hitched to the spring- 
wagon, somebody started to drive around him, 



64 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LITE 

which was no chore, for "Bony" seemed imbued 
with the idea he was leading a funeral procession, 
and no amount of urging seemed able to keep him 
trotting. It did so exhaust him to trot. I would 
swat him over the rafters and he would come out 
of his trance long enough to trot a couple of trots 
that seemed to come out of him like pulling wis- 
dom teeth, and then his steam would run down. 
"Bony" knew he was on the retired list and 
grieved that I did not know it. 

But that day the fellow who attempted to go 
around was driving a sulky, and he didn't go 
around. "Bony" looked out of the corner of his 
weary eyes, saw that sulky, and then something 
happened ! He pricked up his ears, lifted his head, 
sneezed a couple of times and lit out. Fond memo- 
ries came back — memories of county fairs and 
three-minute trots when he was "Napoleon 
Bonaparte." I clung to the lines scared and de- 
lighted. That sulky man never got close to us 
as the spring- wagon hit the high spots in the road. 
After that "Bony" seemed to hold his head higher 
and take more interest in life, for he discovered 
his day hadn't passed. 



An old eagle that was kept in a cage sat day 
by day dully looking out at the people that stared 



THE INSIDERS 65 

at him. He made no friends, had no interest in 
anything. People came every day and looked at 
that sleepy bird, and he batted his old eyes back 
at them. Nothing interested the eagle. The sun, 
the breezes, the sky meant nothing, for he was 
in a cage and had ' ' seen his best days. ' ' 

One day somebody left the cage open. That 
drowsy old bird had been saying, "My day is 
past. I shall never fly again.' ' Bnt out of the 
corner of his eyes he saw the cage-door open. 
He saw thru it the new world beckoning to him. 
He opened his eyes wider. He gripped his perch 
with a new grip. The tips of his wings began 
to tingle. The call of the heavens again warmed 
his heart. He stretched a wing, and it was all 
there. He stretched the other wing, and it was 
all there. He stuck his head out of the cage door. 
Those rusty old wings spread once more. 

E-r-r-r-r-r — rt ! 

With a glad scream he shot upward toward the 
sun. He became a speck in the sky. He was an 
eagle again! 

The cage door is open for every one of us. And 
we are eagles ! Let us begin our resurrection this 
side of the grave. Press the button! Find our 
"thimbles !" 



CHAPTER IV 

GETTING EDUCATED 

Learning to Follow Our Calls 

NOW we have discovered the meaning of 
education. "E-duco," "I lead out." 
Books, teachers, schools, colleges cannot 
educate us. They help us educate — e-duco — 
ourselves. We must rub the Aladdin lamp. We 
must lead out ourselves — shine our own light. 

So education is Big Business. Education is 
expression, art, play. The grades and diplomas 
are symptoms of an education. The book, teacher, 
school merely help untie the strings, remove the 
wrappings, help us find the push-buttons. 

Education is liberation. It is removing the out- 
side, wrong, artificial self, and releasing the in- 
side, good, natural self. Education is finding 
happiness. Any system of education that does 
not increase our happiness is a failure. No selfish, 
sordid soul is well educated, no matter if he has 
his room papered with diplomas. No grouch is 
well educated, no matter how many universities 
he may have attended. No rogue can be an edu- 
cated man. 

66 



GETTING EDUCATED 6? 

I have seen poor little stunted, deformed trees 
brought from China. They had been "educated" 
artificially. I have seen poor little stunted de- 
formed lives here in America that had been ' ' edu- 
cated" just as artificially. We used to cry out 
when the Chinese "educated" the feet of their 
girls by binding them. Should we not cry out 
when our own people ' ' educate ' ' the heads of our 
girls and boys by binding them? 

Expression! Do you remember when they 
thought it meant elocution? That was "speak- 
ing pieces by heart." You remember there was 
not much heart to it, but more hands and head. 
We were taught to elocute externally. A phono- 
graph factory could have made a better elocu- 
tionist out of rubber, brass and pins. First you 
1 * got the piece by heart ' ' — made the record. Then 
the teacher nailed the gestures to the outside. 
We were taught to "let the finger follow the 
wrist ' ' and ' ' let the eyes follow the fingers. ' ' 

Each teacher taught all his pupils the same set 
of gestures, and you got so you could tell all the 
pupils of one teacher because they all wore his 
gestures. You could always tell where the ges- 
ture of the teacher was soldered on to the vic- 
tim, perhaps grafted is the better word, for that 
kind of "elocution" savored of graft. Each 
teacher made his pupils little second editions 
of himself. They called it expression, when it 



68 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

was suppression, impression and depression. 

Today, glory be! it is dawning upon us that 
all life activities — all real music, painting, speak- 
ing, writing, figuring, farming, buying, selling — 
are just different forms of EXPEESSION thru 
whatever channels are natural to us. 

And the teachers are bursting their bonds. 
Schools are awakening. They are teaching the 
elocution pupil to get his own vision of his 
"piece" and express it naturally. They are now 
trying^ to improve the individual and the product 
will improve. The other day a woman dared to 
run a school where the children were allowed to 
develop naturally. The world was so astonished 
that educators came running from everywhere to 
see this daring innovation of just keeping hands 
off and letting children "find their thimbles" 
without mediaeval and inquisitorial interference! 

I dream of sometime running a school where 
I shall try to make it the opposite of many of 
the schools I knew about in childhood. For I was 
educated "at the feet of Gamaliel." Almost 
everything I wanted to do they sternly told me 
was wrong, and almost everything I did not want 
to do was right. I did love to draw pictures in 
school, and I had to "stand on the floor" for it. 
I loved to write things out of my head, and I had 
to * ' stay in at recess ' ' for wasting my time. Now 
I see that whenever I followed these natural calls 



GETTING EDUCATED 69 

from within I was right, and when I followed 
the outside calls I was wrong. Most of my school- 
ing was merely delaying instead of helping my 
development. Much of it was mainly piling up 
obstacles to be cleared away in later years. And 
I say this with all appreciation of the sincere, lov- 
ing efforts of teachers and others to make me un- 
natural. 

I rejoice in the present day development of the 
playground movement. Let us endeavor to carry 
it even farther. Let us try to make the school 
so interesting and make the studies such great 
games that the children will run shouting into 
school as they run shouting out of school to the 
playground. 

"We fill so many school hours having the pupils 
study arithmetic, geography, grammar, and the 
other "branches," and have scarcely begun to 
have them study the great tree-trunk — them- 
selves. We are beginning to employ vocational 
directors as an extra, when their work is destined 
to evolve from an amateur employment agency 
into the department that must underly and com- 
mand all the rest. We are spending about all the 
time teaching the pupil to look outside. We are 
presently going to spend more time teaching him 
to look inside and "know thyself." 

I believe the greatest need of our schools is 
love, vision, inspiration. I believe that anybody 



70 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

who teaches school because he needs the money 
or thinks it a stepping-stone to something else, 
is doing more harm than good. Schools get so 
enmeshed in red-tape and buried in methods. 
Many a teachers' institute spends the week listen- 
ing to specialists and experts finding fault with 
present methods and splitting hairs, and the 
teachers go back to their work bewildered and 
discouraged instead of inspired and enthused over 
being permitted to have a part in the wonderful 
work of helping the next generation to find itself. 



''Wanner" and "Colder" Studies 

Do you children in school notice that some 
studies call to you and some do not? You like 
some and dislike others. Some say, "Warmer" 
and some say, "Colder." I have the feeling that 
you should give most of your time to the "warm- 
er" studies, for they are calling you towards your 
"thimbles," your talents, and that you should not 
spend much more time on the "colder" studies 
than the school board decides is necessary. 

We have to do very many things we do not like 
to do, but these are merely accessory to doing 
the things we like to do. We have to drudge at 
the multiplication table before we can revel in the 



GETTING EDUCATED 71 

mathematical joys beyond. We have to struggle 
to walk before we can frolic over life's play- 
ground. 

If you study grammar or mathematics and 
something says, ' ' Colder, ' ' I would not study more 
than necessary to get a working knowledge of 
these branches. But if you find something inside 
of you saying, "Warmer," that is your call to go 
on specializing in them. Your "thimbles" — 
some of them — are likely going to be found along 
these lines. 

If history or literature says, "Warmer," fol- 
low this call. If music calls you, if you love to 
sing, study music or play the piano, then go on 
singing, studying or playing. If you love to sketch 
or paint, go on sketching or painting. 

Perhaps none of these things appeal to you, but 
you love to whittle, drive nails, design or work 
with tools. Then go on with these things. For 
there is one of your playgrounds. 



Confessions of a " Blockhead" 

Some faculties develop quickly, some very 
slowly. Some people develop early, others de- 
velop later in life. Some find the work in school 
calling to them, while others respond little to 
these appeals. 



72 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

These slow pupils in school are the "block- 
heads. ' ' Cabbage matures in one summer, but the 
oak wants a hundred summers. So the cabbage- 
head often gets rated higher than the oak at the 
start. A "blockhead' ' is a head that has not 
started to burn. 

I suppose I am trying to defend myself, for I 
was a " blockhead. ' ' Are there any more "block- 
heads ' ' in this audience I 0, fellow * ' blockheads, ' ' 
if you are here, I know what you have suffered ! 

My early schooling was a tragedy. I was so 
slow and it was so hard for me to learn things out 
of books. I would try my best, but it was always 
my worst. I would take my books home night 
after night and plead to stay at home. I was 
laughed at and scolded in school. I cannot re- 
member one kind word of encouragement or sym- 
pathy from teacher or pupils. I never got up to 
recite or went to the blackboard but what the 
thought so often dinned into me would arise, "You 
can't do it, you are too dull." And that helped 
greatly ! 

I had failed so often and had been put back in 
the classes until I sat at a desk so small I could 
hardly get my knees under it. There was a little 
smarty right beside me. He could get it right off 
the bat, and I couldn't get it till next week — and 
then I'd generally "muff" it! 

Why do they put a smarty beside a "blockhead" 



GETTING EDUCATED 73 

to rub it in on him ! Many a day I had my geog- 
raphy up over my face. I was not studying the 
map; I was trying to hide my face. I used to 
think I 'd be hung for stupidity. If stupidity were 
a capital crime, believe me, this lecture would 
never have been given ! 



I remember the day before the night when I did 
not sleep any. The teacher blew up with a loud 
noise. He got so mad and red in the face after he 
had tried to tell me something and I could not get 
it, that he said, " You blockhead, you ! I am done 
trying to tell you anything. You just can't re- 
member it. Your head is made out of wood, and 
to-morrow I am going to bring a gimlet and bore a 
hole in your head. Then I'm going to write it 
down on paper and stick it in the hole. That is 
the only way you'll ever get anything into your 
head." 

And I looked up at him like a piece of putty. I 
was scared so that I did not know my own name. 
I went sobbing home, wild with fear. " Don't let 
him do it. Don't let him bore a hole in my head! 
Don't make me go back to school." I cried all 
night, and trembled for days afterwards. I do 
not think I have ever gotten completely over it. 



74 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

Stop and think! Think of any man telling a 
slow, discouraged hoy he was going to bore a hole 
in his head ! That man was not a teacher. He had 
never found his "thimble." He lacked the first 
essential for a teacher, he did not love his pupils. 
He could not get a job in any school in America 
today shoveling coal into the kindergarten base- 
ment. As I got older I pitied that man more than 
myself, for he was an unhappy man, had no friends 
and died at the end of a misfit, unhappy, loveless 
life without a tear shed for him. 

0, what a grand discovery I made in later years 
— that there were things in this world I could 
learn and do — things that the smarty could not do ! 
He had one equipment of batteries and I had an- 
other. 

And I am saying this hoping that you will try 
all the harder to encourage the slow child today. 
Show that child that there is as much success for 
him as for anybody else. Your duty is to the slow 
one more than to the bright one, who needs less 
showing. 

Famous "Blockheads" 

I was greatly cheered to read that the teacher 
of Thomas A. Edison reported to his parents, 
1 ' Take that child out of school. He is addled. "I 



GETTING EDUCATED 75 

had such a striking resemblance to the wizard of 
electricity — in just that one respect ! He has cer- 
tainly developed many batteries since the 
"addled" days! 



There are so many different kinds of "block- 
heads. ' ' There was a conversational ' ' blockhead ' ' 
in my college classes. He could not tell you any- 
thing about the lesson, but he could fill in the time 
with such interesting discussions of other things 
that you would forget about the lessons. I never 
heard him recite. When it came his turn he would 
gracefully engage the professor in some debate or 
other argument that would take up the time. 

We always enjoyed the time when it came Joe's 
turn to recite. He got by with something new each 
time. We rather pitied him. We do not now, for 
he is at the head of a big manufacturing plant 
where he handles men with the same grace and 
ease he handled the professors. Indeed, after Joe 
graduated he was a college president for awhile, 
elected on his sheer ability to converse and smile 
endowment money out of plutocrats. 

History is heavy with just such cases of 
i ' blockheads ' ' who astonished the world after they 
found their "thimbles." Just the other day I 
wrote a letter to one of the great preachers of the 
land. "Doctor," I wrote, "I want to put a chap- 



76 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LITE 

ter on i blockheads ' into a lecture on Big Business. 
Would you mind telling me about your early 
schooldays ? ' ' 

It was an awful and impertinent thing to do, 
and it is a wonder he didn't arrest me for Use- 
majeste or something like that, but he wrote back 
several pages of joyous confession of his sorrow- 
ful and slow beginnings in a celebrated Eastern 
university. He chuckled as he admitted that he 
was slow, very slow in most branches. The re- 
ports on him grew steadily worse. His mathe- 
matical deficiencies were melancholy in the ex- 
treme. He could not get on speaking terms with 
a logarithm nor look upon the binomial theorem 
with the least degree of allowance. 

The faculty were for letting him go, but one 
professor held out for him. Finally that profes- 
sor lost hope, and then the faculty with tears in 
their eyes — and joy in their hearts — called that 
dull mathematician upon their classic green carpet 
and explained that after long and prayerful delib- 
eration they had come to the unanimous conclu- 
sion that his case was hopeless, and perhaps a 
change of environment might be more conducive 
to his educational development, might it not? 

That dull mathematician thought his future was 
pretty black. But he found his " thimbles,' ' one 
by one. He found he could read deeper into hu- 
man nature than into geometry. He found he had 



GETTING EDUCATED 77 

an eloquent tongue and a gift of leadership. He 
found he had a great vision of service for man- 
kind. He became a preacher, and wherever he 
spoke the people crowded to listen. 

The dream of a school fired him, and one day 
he poured out his heart, "What I Would Do if I 
Had a Million Dollars. " One man sat in his audi- 
ence greatly moved, for he had been wondering 
what to do with his millions. He, too, was fired 
with the school vision, and he followed the 
preacher into his study after the sermon. "Do 
you mean that?" 

"I do." 

1 l Then here is your million. ' ' And he gave him 
more millions. And the preacher has given his 
later years to making his school dreams come 
true. 

That fine old Eastern university now numbers 
that erstwhile "blockhead'' among "our honored 
sons"! 

"And they lived happily ever afterward," as 
the story-books say it at the close. 



Don't Mistake Your Vocation 

Along with the sorrows of the "blockhead" in 
every community are the sorrows of the child be- 



78 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

ing crowded into a place lie cannot fit. A good 
many parents are trying to call their children in- 
stead of letting God do the calling. 

Phineas T. Barnum, the famous showman, was 
so much more than a showman. He had a pro- 
found understanding of life. He says in his auto- 
biography : 

"The safest plan, and the one most sure of suc- 
cess for the young man starting in life, is to select 
the vocation which is most congenial to his tastes. 
Parents and guardians are often quite too negligent 
in regard to this. It is very common for a father to 
say, for example: 'I have five hoys. I will make 
Bill a clergyman ; John a lawyer ; Tom a doctor ; and 
Dick a farmer.' He then goes to town and looks 
about to see what he will do with Sammy. He returns 
home and says, 'Sammy, I see watchmaking is a nice, 
genteel business ; I think I will make you a goldsmith. ' 
He does this, regardless of Sam's natural inclinations 
or genius. 

"We are all, no doubt, born for a wise purpose. 
There is as much diversity in our brains as in our 
countenances. Some are born natural mechanics, 
while some have great aversion to machinery. Let a 
dozen boys of ten years get together, and you will 
soon observe two or three are whittling out some in- 
genious device, working with locks or complicated 
machinery. When they were but five years old, their 
father could find no toy to please them like a puzzle. 
They are natural mechanics; but the other eight or 



GETTING EDUCATED 79 

nine boys have different aptitudes. I belong to the 
latter class. I never had the slightest love for mech- 
anism. On the contrary, I have a sort of abhorrence 
for complicated machinery. I never had ingenuity 
enough to whittle a cider-tap so it would not leak. I 
never could make a pen I could write with, or under- 
stand the principle of the steam-engine. 

"If a man was to take such a boy as I was, and at- 
tempt to make a watchmaker of him, the boy might, 
after an apprenticeship of five or six years, be able 
to take apart and put together a watch; but all thru 
life he would be working uphill and seizing every ex- 
cuse for leaving his work and idling away his time. 
Watchmaking is repulsive to him. 

"Unless a man enters upon his vocation intended for 
him by nature, and best suited to his particular genius, 
he cannot succeed. I am glad to believe that the ma- 
jority of persons do find the right vocation. Yet we 
see many who have mistaken their calling, from the 
blacksmith up (or down) to the clergyman. You will 
see, for instance, that extraordinary linguist, the 
1 learned blacksmith,' who ought to have been a teacher 
of languages ; and you may have seen lawyers, doctors 
and clergymen who were better fitted by nature for 
the anvil or lapstone. " 

Wouldn't this world be a wonderful playground 
if all parents were as wise as Eli with Samuel! 
When they saw the child reaching for a book, a 
hammer or a fiddle, they would rejoice and say, 



80 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

" Child, you are being called. We are going to 
help you find your ' thimble. ' Do not follow us; 
let us all follow the call." 



The Calling of Biddy Brahma 

Once I had a Brahma hen that had a call to set. 
I have never known a Brahma hen that did not 
have a loud and persistent call to set. I argued 
with Biddy Brahma about this. "Why, Biddy, 
you ought to be ashamed of yourself in setting 
when eggs are so high that every patriotic hen 
should be up and laying for dear life. ' ' 

I spake more and more harshly to her. I told 
her she was not called, she was short-circuited. 
I broke up her setteries one by one, but she went 
right on setting. I would throw her out of the 
nest, and she would go over and set in the manger. 
I chased her from manger to granary, from pillar 
to post. She went on setting on bricks and door- 
knobs, it mattered little. One day I caught her 
setting on an old boot. My heart smote me. Who 
am I to stand between this earnest creature and 
her call? 

I said, "Biddy, forgive me for my harshness. 
You shall set. Such devotion to your call to duty 
is touching." I fixed up a fine new settery. I got 
a barrel that had never been set in. I fixed hay 
into a nest and tried to make it as homelike and 



GETTING EDUCATED 81 

cozy as possible. I hung pictures on the walls. 
But I could find no chicken eggs, so I put eleven 
duck eggs in the nest. 

"Go to it, Biddy!" And Biddy went right into 
that barrel and spread herself over those eggs. 
The glad light of anticipatory motherhood came 
into her face. Did you ever study the face of a 
setting hen — from a safe distance 1 

"Leave it all to me. Depart in peace. I'm on 
the job, and l watchful waiting' will do the rest," 
she said. 

Day after day as I passed the barrel I would 
bend down and look in. "Hello, Biddy, how are 
you getting along? ' ' And always she would reply, 
"0, just fine. All's well. You just wait and I'll 
show you eleven of the finest chickens you ever 
saw." 

Chickens! I didn't argue with Biddy. I never 
argue with an old hen ! 

But one day, right on the calendar dot, there 
was great joy and jubilation in that barrel. There 
was a grand homecoming celebration and poultry 
carnival, with free street parade. I looked down 
the garden walk and saw the procession forming. 
There was Biddy in front as drum-major and the 
entire fuzzy family following. 

It was an inspiring sight. "Cluck! cluck! 
quack ! quack ! quack ! cluck ! cluck ! quack ! quack ! 
quack ! ' ' 



82 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

The procession halted at the kitchen door. "Let 
me introduce you to my family,' ' said Biddy. 
"Aren't these the finest chickens you ever saw?" 

Love is blind ! ' ' Chickens ! Why, Biddy, these 
are not chickens. Look at their noses. Look at 
their feet. ' ' 

Biddy was mad in a minute. "Chickens! I 
guess I ought to know. I am their mother. Look 
here, children, did you hear that dreadful man 
saying you are not chickens? You are my good 
little chickens, aren 't you 1 ' ' 

And every one of those fuzzy little things looked 
right up into the face of its own mother and 
quacked, "Yes, mother, we are your good little 
chickens." They thought they were chickens. 
They had not found their "thimble." I did not 
argue with them. Time would tell. 

"Cluck! cluck! quack! quack! quack!" I 
watched them go around into the front yard. 
1 ' Cluck ! cluck ! quack ! quack ! quack ! ' ' they went 
over into the orchard. They came to that over- 
worked "psychological moment," where Biddy 
commanded, "Column right! Cluck!" Biddy 
column-righted, but every one of the fuzzy family 
column-lefted. They saw the pool of water to the 
left. They ran for it, and all lit with one joyful 
splash in the water. They obeyed a higher call 
than the mother call — the call of their own nature. 

They had found their "thimble." They were 



GETTING EDUCATED 83 

ducks. Their swim-battery called and they an- 
swered. "Children! Children! Come right out 
of that water this minute! You'll drown !" 
shouted Biddy. 

But every duckling knew better. Not one came 
out. Biddy came to me with tears in her eyes. 
" I 'm done ! ' ' she wailed. ' i Done ! Never again ! 
I'm done. Stop my subscription to The Ladies' 
Home Journal. Things aren't like they used to 
be. What is this world coming to! Here I train 
up my chickens in the way they should go, and they 
go to the ducks ! ' ' 

This world is such a world of misfits because we 
so often try to make a good duck into a quack 
chicken. 

Father's Chicken a Duck 

My father was a chicken. I was a duck. My 
father was a Methodist preacher. How the 
thought of a chicken does call up the thought of a 
preacher ! 

My earliest childhood recollections are of my 
father taking me into his study and telling me I 
was to be a preacher. * ' My boy, I have given you 
to God!" He would get very earnest and his 
voice would tremble. "You are to have all these 
books." He would point around at the solemn 
shelves of commentaries, homiletics and theolo- 



84 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

gies. "You are to stand in my pulpit when I am 
gone and you are to carry on my work. ' ' 

0, how he loved his work ! No sacrifice was too 
great for his work. He was happiest in sacrific- 
ing for his work. Those pioneer days when he 
was a "circuit-rider" in the wilderness, our lit- 
tle family watched him come in from his work and 
ran to his saddlebags to find the apples and other 
"quarterage" offerings the "brethren and sis- 
ter 'n" had lovingly put there. He had come on 
his tired horse perhaps fifty miles, and in winter 
there would be icicles frozen around him, for he 
had to swim some bridgeless rivers. 

I would say, "Yes, father, I will be a preacher." 
Wouldn't I have made a bird of a preacher! I 
thought father knew. I told the people I was 
going to be a preacher. But one day when I was 
about twelve years old, a printer moved into our 
little town and opened up the first printing office 
I had ever seen. That print-shop was my duck- 
pond. I couldn't stay away from it. I think I 
had my nose between that printer and every box of 
type he unpacked. 

' ' You little rascal, get out of my way ! ' ' And he 
would kick me out. I would go right back. I ran 
away from school, I ran away from home, to get 
down to that print-shop to get kicked out. Why? 
You tell me why the ducks go to the water and I '11 
tell you why I went to the print-shop. 

When I touched a piece of type, it thrilled me 



GETTING EDUCATED 85 

I knew I was going to be a printer. The smell of 
printers' ink intoxicated me. I heard a man say 
the other day that the smell of Limberger cheese 
is the sweetest smell in the world for him. I un- 
derstood. He was a born cheesemaker. 

I became a printer. I could not have become 
anything else. I worked at the case early and 
late. I read all I could about printing. And I 
am a good printer. I am proud to say that. I am 
proud of a fine print-shop back east, and it is the 
same old joy to get into it. It is part of my play- 
ground. 

Behind the Scenes with a Lecturer 

But my father's hair grew grayer. He lost 
some of his interest in life. He argued with me, 
physically as well as spiritually ! He scolded me, 
pleaded with me in a vain attempt to stop me from 
being a printer. "My boy, you are throwing 
yourself away. You are doing wrong and cannot 
prosper. God called you to preach and here you 
are disregarding your call." 

Father was mistaken. God called me to print, 
and father was calling me to preach. Down in- 
side of me I knew. There were years of this mis- 
understanding, and then one happy day father 
said, "My boy, you were right and I was wrong. 
I see it now. I have watched you these years. 
I have seen how happy and confident you have 



86 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

been in your work. I see it is all a great plan." 
Young people, I am not telling you to disobey 
your parents. They love you, sacrifice for you, 
perhaps more than you will ever fully understand. 
But I am hoping that when the question of your 
career comes up, you will make them see that you 
are a human flashlight and that you will say, 
' ' Father, mother, uncle, aunt, help me find my bat- 
teries and make them shine, that I may be happy 
and make you happy. ' ' 

And I am hoping that the fathers, mothers, 
uncles, aunts will strive to wake the child that 
hears no "warmer" call. 



That same print-shop call led me farther into 
it — into being reporter, writer, editor and things 
like that. It called me out on the platform. Here 
I am a lecturer. And I am a grand success as a 
lecturer ! 

i ' Egotist ! ' ' you say. ' ' He can 't lecture ! ' ' 

No, I can't lecture! But I am a grand success 
at getting joy out of trying to lecture. A crow can 
get just as much joy out of his singing as a lark, 
tho he cannot sing so well, but he is a successful 
singer as I am a successful lecturer. 

Yes, I wonder quite as much as you why I am 
on the platform. I did not plan it, I am a 
i i Topsy ' ' lecturer — just happened. I have always 



GETTING EDUCATED 87 

envied the minister and the orator with the graces 
of expression. I was a bashful, timid little boy 
who ran away and hid when "company" came to 
our house. I couldn't "speak a piece" in school 
without suffering even more agony than the 
school. 

I was an actor just once. I was one of the angels 
in the Sunday School Christmas play. I was the 
angel that said, "Glory to God in the highest." 
I practiced that awake and asleep. l ' Glory to God 
in the highest!" I got the reputation for being 
very devout. If I fell down, I would say, ' i Glory 
to God in the highest ! ' ' And that night the angel 
flew down on the stage all right before the watch- 
ful shepherds, but some son of Belial in the vast 
crowd waiting for the Christmas treat, shouted, 
"Oh, see Fatty!" They called me "Fatty" be- 
cause I wasn't fat, only fat-headed. The angel 
forgot his speech and ran crying off the stage. 

I can always give a fine lecture to myself in the 
room alone, but when I get up before an audience 
somehow I make a mess of it as a general thing. 
I tell you truly, in these more than twenty-five 
years of trying to speak on platforms — every day 
most of the time, often twice or thrice a day, I 
have never yet made an address that satisfied me. 
There was always a sense of disappointment after- 
wards. I had failed to do all I had planned to do. 
I could always think of some of the things I 



88 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

wanted to say when it was too late — the people 
had gone home. 

Time after time I have gone from these plat- 
forms broken-hearted. I have gone back to the 
hotel — if I was so fortunate as to have a hotel for 
the night and not have to travel — and a hundred 
times I have flung myself on the bed and 
"bawled"! I did not weep — that is entirely too 
slow and dignified — I "bawled"! I was crushed, 
crestfallen, disgraced. I wanted to die — and I 
couldn't even die! And often I have gone out of 
town at midnight with inexplicable perversity, 
thinking it would be safer ! 

Usually my worst failures have been where my 
friends or relatives came out to see my "tri- 
umph," or where critics or booking managers 
were in the audience getting my measure. I 
wanted to shine my shiniest, but I generally did 
my shadiest. I would become unnatural trying to 
show off. I would get myself in front of my work, 
and the audience saw a conceited, excited, exag- 
gerated man instead of his sincere vision. 

I am discovering that most of the grief came 
from my wounded vanity. 

You say, "Well, if lecturing is so painful, why 
don't you quit it and put us all out of our pain?" 
When you tell me why those ducklings went to the 
water, perhaps I can tell you. 

I find a joy in trying to tell audiences the things 



GETTING EDUCATED 89 

my heart tells me are true. I have the privilege 
of addressing the best people of every community 
in these audiences. I find a joy in writing as I 
travel, and another joy even in overcoming the 
hardships of travel. I am learning better each 
day that all this world is one family, and each one 
I meet can teach me perhaps far more than I can 
teach him. These arduous lecture years have 
been the happiest years of my life so far. 

These things are my playthings. The map is 
my playground. I often feel that I should pay 
audiences for my privilege. I often feel that I am 
the most fortunate person in the world. I feel as 
tho I wouldn't trade jobs with anybody in the 
world. 0, I am not boasting nor posing as an ex- 
ample of success. I am only a very grateful ap- 
prentice in the Big Business school. I am holding 
my daily Thanksgiving service. 

And I have said all this to set you to thinking 
about your own work. When you go back to your 
home, to your shop, to your office, to your farm, 
make an inventory. Look around and say, "This 
is my playground. Here I can be happiest. Here 
I can best let my light shine and be what I was 
created to be." 

If you cannot say that, go on hunting your 
"thimble. " Somewhere you '11 find it. And right 
at hand! 



CHAPTER V 
YES, YOU CAN! 
Find Your ''Thimbles"— and "Meal-Tickets 



> f 



NO HAPPIER, sweeter message could come 
to young people — and to all people who 
would find the fountain of perpetual youth 
— than this : YOU CAN ! You dream dreams and 
see visions. You want to do things. 0, how you 
want to do things ! The most preposterous things, 
too — and visionary. 

Perhaps you confide in somebody older. Per- 
haps that older and more "practical" somebody 
pooh-poohs your dream. "Forget it, child, you 
can't do that!" Pretty soon you forget it and 
give up trying to glimpse the heavenly vision, or 
you shut up like a clam and confide no more, but 
hold on to your guilty secret. 

I am sorry for two kinds of people — people who 
have no dreams, and people who are always 
"practical." It seems to me the first kind have 
not yet waked and the second kind have gone to 
sleep. 

Dreams are the realities of life. What we see 
in this world is only somebody's more or less im- 

90 



YES, YOU CAN! 91 

perfect attempt to translate his dream into some- 
thing the five senses can cognize. Every book, 
every picture, every law, building, machine or em- 
pire, is an imperfect translation of somebody's 
dream. Fulton dreamed of a steamboat, and his 
first steamboat was called ' ' Fulton 's Folly. ' ' The 
first railroad across the American West was a 
much-ridiculed dream. The first flying-machine 
was received with so much derision that Langley 
went to his grave with a broken heart. 

Joseph the dreamer saves his "practical" 
brethren. The dreamer has always been the savior 
of the race. Dreaming the impossible makes it 
possible. Success is trying to make our dreams 
come true. 



Children, what do you want to do? You can 
do it. Be happy that you want to do it. Hold on 
to that dream. It is a precious, sacred thing. Do 
you want to sing, to speak, to write, act, build, in- 
vent, study, or work with head, hands or heart in 
some other field? 

YOU CAN ! That sincere longing within you is 
the call of your awakening talent. 

I am happy when a child confides in me what he 
wants to do or to be. I am happy when I get a 
certain kind of letter that comes very often. It 



92 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LITE 

is not a business letter, it is a Big Business letter. 
It is a real love-letter that some boy or girl I have 
never seen has had confidence enough in me to 
write. It is written in the copy-book style of pen- 
manship, maybe on perfumed paper, maybe on a 
torn page from a scratch-pad. But my heart 
beats a little faster as I read it, and often I wipe 
my eyes. It is a letter from some child — maybe 
from some grownup child — who has confided in 
me and taken me into the holy of holies. I write 
back, Yes, God bless you, YOU CAN! Go to it! 
Yes, YOU CAN! And your great happiness 
will come in trying to make your dreams come 
true, no matter how many obstacles surround you. 
There never was a wing given to a bird there was 
not a place for it to fly. There never was a fin 
given to a fish there was not water for it to swim 
in. That call is from your wing or fin. YOU 
CAN! 



"Canning" "You Can't!" 

Of course, the world immediately says, "You 
can't!" The world challenges us every time we 
set out to answer our call. That is a part of our 
testing. But we push past the sentry lines of 
achievement with the password, "I can!" You 
must "can" the "can't." 



YES, YOU CAN! 93 

\ 

Schumann-Heink, the world's great contralto, 
had to face that. They told her, "You can't!" 
just as they have told almost every one who has 
dared to struggle to be what he or she was planned 
to be. 

She was a poor girl of the Old World when she 
first felt a great yearning to sing. She went to the 
Hof Opera director in Vienna and asked him to 
hear her sing. And he was not impressed. I am 
never very deeply impressed with expert testi- 
mony. I would believe the tyro's "I can" before 
the jaded critic's "You can't." In these "try- 
outs ' ' the applicant generally does his poorest in- 
stead of his best, being generally "scared stiff." 
You remember even Caruso was told by an early 
teacher that he never would sing very well. 

The director said to Schumann-Heink, "What! 
You sing? With such a face and no personality 
at all! How can you expect to succeed at all? 
Ach ! Impossible ! My dear child, give up the idea 
of singing. Go back home, buy a sewing-machine 
and go to work. You will never be a singer. ' ' 

The girl went back home to work on the sewing- 
machine, but not to forget her singing. The sew- 
ing-machine job is just as grand as grand opera, 
but her call was to sing. She went on singing. 
There were years of her struggle to develop in 
singing. She was married and then forced to live 
in greater and greater poverty, deserted by her 



94 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

husband, struggling to feed her children, with the 
landlord threatening to evict her for non-payment 
of rent and the sheriff threatening to take the few 
pieces of furniture she still had left. 

0, girls, so many of you are " slackers' ' with 
your calls and your talents. So many of you sit 
around and powder your nose and toy with a 
" vanity-box, ' ' abject slaves to a dead tyranny of 
medievalism that considered a woman as a man's 
chattel. You say, i ' What is the use of my trying 
to develop myself ? I have no future. ' ' 

You seem to think that all there is in life for you 
is to sit around ornamentally until some Lochin- 
var comes with his i ' flivver ' ' and steals you ! But 
this thought is changing. 

Thank the terrible war for calling you and 
opening the doors into a thousand new fields of 
usefulness. It was indeed a war of liberation — 
liberation of nations, and sexes as well. The glory 
of femininity today is not its helplessness but its 
helpfulness. 



Schumann-Heink was true to her call. She did 
not surrender. She went on singing to her babe 
in her arms. She sang grand opera as she rocked 
the cradle. She would put her children to bed and 
then leave them alone in their small quarters while 
she sang for a pittance in a cheap theater. 



YES, YOU CAN! 95 

This is success. Had she never become known, 
she would have succeeded. All that followed was 
merely the world's labeling. There came the night 
when the grand opera star failed. All unre- 
hearsed the unknown contralto was put into the 
part. She made the great hit. The Vienna direc- 
tor came rushing to her after the performance. 
' ' Wonderful ! I must congratulate you ! ' ' 

1 ' Well! Well! If this isn't the man who told 
me I couldn 't sing. You told me to go home and 
buy a sewing-machine. I have to thank you for 
stirring my ambition. ' ' 

" Never give up," is her message to young peo- 
ple. " Never believe them when they tell you, 
' You can 't. ' You can ! ' ' 



# # 



True Calls and False Calls 

This does not mean that all or many may be- 
come singers like Schumann-Heink, but I do be- 
lieve it means that all who feel a call to sing can 
get just as much happiness out of singing as the 
great contralto can get out of singing. 

I imagine no artist ever sings, plays, speaks, 
acts, writes, designs, builds, or runs an office, a 
farm, a store, an engine, a bank or a bakeshop (for 
anybody who does anything happily and well is 



96 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

an artist whether designing a pumpkin pie or a 
Greek temple), that some one watching does not 
wish he could do that. You can — if you are will- 
ing to make the effort. 

If some child should say, "I want to jump to 
the moon," I would say, "All right! One for the 
money, two for the show, three to make ready, and 
four to go ! Jump ! ' ' 

You think I should not encourage the child to 
try to do the impossible? What is impossible? 
The child will likely never jump to the moon, but 
there is some little battery inside it calling to be 
used in that direction, and as the child tries to 
jump to the moon, and keeps on trying, it will 
land in its playground. It is out there towards 
the moon, or that is the start of the path to its 
playground. 

You see, these calls are so vaguely interpreted 
at first. I used to think I had a call to be a brake- 
man on the railroad. It was not the railroad 
business that called, it was the excitement of the 
riding on a swaying car. Many a person goes fol- 
lowing a call from one profession to another, fol- 
lowing that "warmer" call, and that is right, for 
if he follows intelligently, each change is just the 
clicking of another switch carrying him to the 
real mainline to his playground. 

The other day I say a dozen trains side by side 
in the St. Louis Union Station. One was 



YES, YOU CAN! 97 

placarded "To New York," another "To San 
Francisco/ ' another "To Chicago" and yet an- 
other "To New Orleans." Yet as each train 
started to follow its call, it went the same direc- 
tion as all the rest. All the trains were first called 
to run out into the yards beyond the station. The 
train really called to New York was first called 
to go the opposite way. 

"That train will never get to New York going 
that way," you say. But wait. As it follows its 
first call, a switch clicks and its call veers it a 
little to the north. It follows on till another switch 
turns it farther eastward, and presently as it 
keeps following its call it finds itself running to- 
wards New York. 

You had a call to come down town this morn- 
ing. Perhaps the call led you first east to one 
street-corner, then south to another, and so on, 
but all the time leading you nearer your destina- 
tion. 

The dog follows the scent uphill and down, first 
this way and then that way. He stays right on 
the trail of his game wherever it leads. That is 
success. "We are trailing our calls thru life. Very 
few follow a distinct call that leads straight thru. 
Very few can hear the call so clearly. Very many 
of us must follow the trail by elimination and 
development thru one work to another. 

But don't forget that the dog keeps running on 



98 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

the scent. So many of us either quit running dis- 
couraged or chase about with the tramp 's wander- 
lust. 

Some people say if they follow their natural 
calls they will go wrong. They excuse their sins 
and excesses, their chronic and periodic "ornery- 
ness," their slavery to wrong habits, by saying, 
"•I can't help it. It was born in me." hered- 
ity! What crimes are committed in thy name! 
They are fooling themselves and trying to evade 
responsibility — moral "slackers" trying to hide 
behind ancestors who cannot protest. 

I have tried to show on another page that the 
real call is the ' ' still, small voice ' ' leading us up- 
ward to higher, purer, happier self -development. 
The false call is the suggestion leading downward 
into baser, coarser, unhappier life. 

Big Business is following the calls that lead 
upward. 



Why Nordica Said, "Don't" 

Let us discuss singing as a type of every art. 
Why do you want to sing? Is it because you 
want to stand before an audience and get ap- 
plause, get your name in the paper and have 
people turn to look at you as you pass? That is 



YES, YOU CAN! 99 

the call of your selfishness and vanity more than 
your talents. And these motives, if allowed to 
dominate you, will never lead you to success and 
happiness. 

It is said that Nordica was once asked to write 
an article for a periodical on "How to Become 
a Grand Opera Singer." She replied that her 
price would be $10,000 and the article would have 
just one word, "Don't." 

For doubtless Nordica was thinking of the 
countless human moths drawn to the fierce glare 
of the grand opera stage, thinking that fortune 
and fame awaited them. She was thinking of the 
common scenes like a recent one where a famous 
prima donna indulged in a hysterical outburst, 
tore her hair and bit her lips till they bled, be- 
cause she had been assigned to a certain role twice, 
while her rival had been assigned to it three times. 

She was thinking of the young singer who sat 
in her dressing-room and went into tantrums 
when another singer on the stage scored a tri- 
umph, until a number of people were necessary to 
quiet her. 

Yes, they had found their "thimble," but the 
joy of their expression is tainted by the discords 
of jealousy. 

She was thinking of the multitudes of singers 
who have lost their voices and fame and vogue 
(oftentimes their money, too!) as they flutter 



100 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

around the lobbies, gazing despairingly at the ar- 
tists applauded on the stage and remembering 
when they were applauded. 

She was thinking of the pitiable stragglers thru 
the years who have waited for a chance, some of 
them deluded into belief that their mediocrity is 
artistry, by sordid teachers. They, too, haunt the 
lobbies, clinging to forlorn hopes and perhaps ex- 
plaining that they are the victims of malice or 
persecution. 



I am not so sure that schools that lay great 
stress upon "situations guaranteed for students,' ' 
are not bidding more for dollars than develop- 
ment. 

There is the dead-line. Do not confuse your 
shining with your marketing. 

As in music, so in every field. Study business, 
study mechanics, study the arts and sciences to 
be able to play a better game with finer toys and 
tools. 



Then Go Home and Sing 

But it is quite right to want to sing to audi- 
ences. Suppose you go up to the bureau or to the 



YES, YOU CAK! 101 

impresario and tell them you want a position to 
sing. You will have to be very talented even to 
interest them. You may find it hard to get a hear- 
ing. A manager recently said that he had given 
interviews to 20,000 applicants for platform posi- 
tions, and had given hearings to half that num- 
ber, the past twenty years. These were all con- 
cert applicants. "It seems like more than a mil- 
lion, ' ' he adds ! Perhaps he heard twice or thrice 
as many more reader and lecturer applicants. 
You realize a busy manager must cut his hearings 
short. 

I do not like to be about bureau offices. Too 
many tragedies there. Too many young people 
go away with red eyes after being refused places. 
For every singer on the stage there were scores 
refused. 

Won't they hire you to sing? Are you going 
to say, "There, that settles it. I cannot sing! " 

Suppose a bird should go to the bureau and say, 
"Mr. Bureauman, hire me to sing in your front 
tree." Suppose a flower should go and ask, 
"Please, Mr. Bureauman, will you hire me to blos- 
som in your front yard?" Now suppose the 
bureauman should say, ' ' Excuse me, Mr. Bird and 
Miss Flower, but I have all the birds and flowers 
I need," do you suppose the bird would go away 



102 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIEE 

saying, " There, I can't sing"? Do you suppose 
the flower would say, "I am a failure"? 

All this world is left to sing and blossom in. 
Go back home and sing. Study and develop at 
every opportunity. Sing at church, sing at home, 
sing in your work. If they won't let you sing 
there, go out in the barn and sing — sing to the 
cows, sing to yourself. For you are the only real 
audience that counts. It matters little where you 
sing; it matters much why you sing. You sing 
to be happy, and nobody but yourself can prevent 
you from being happy in singing. 

There are thousands needed to sing in kitchens 
to one needed to sing on the stage. To my mind 
there is no sweeter music than the contented song 
of the woman at her home work, or the whistle of 
the man at his job, or the lullaby of the mother 
at the cradle. 

Over in the fields are thousands of flowers. It 
matters little where they blossom or which is 
great and which is small. It matters little wheth- 
er they are ever gathered and sold in bouquets. 
It matters much that they blossom wherever they 
are. 

And if you want to get before audiences, start 
your work at home — make your own audiences. 
If you can make your own audiences, you will not 
have to go to managers ; they will come to you. 



YES, YOU CAN! 103 

Those Amateur Artists 

I do not laugh at amateur musicians as I once 
did. They are artists to the extent they can get 
joy out of their music. When I hear somebody 
with a poor voice and little musical ability trying 
to sing, when I hear an amateur orchestra or band 
doing its joyful best, when I hear somebody try- 
ing to whistle, I respect their sincere efforts to 
follow the call. No matter what the music is — 
classic or unclassic, highbrow, lowbrow or no 
brow, ragtime or the jazziest of the jazz — I now 
respect it to the extent it is giving joy to the 
players, even tho I have to move out of earshot, 
because unable to hear only the spirit without 
the understanding. 

I will lovingly join in trying to help them de- 
velop their musical batteries or show them they 
have pressed the wrong button. 

The amateur has just as much right to like his 
rattlebox music as the highbrow has to like his 
classics. It is a matter of education and training. 
The Chinaman laughs at our sensuous, simple, 
harmonious music, just as we laugh at the noises 
he calls music, tho each tone to him conveys a 
distinct thought or picture. 

The amateur often gets far more joy out of 
his music than the professional who is metering 
out a higher-grade article. One of the foremost 



104 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

musical critics recently said he would rather hear 
an enthusiastic young, half -developed player or 
singer than some professionals who have "ar- 
rived. " In the young one, the bloom is on the 
peach, the enthusiasm and joy are there, and the 
other is too often retailing it by the joyless yard. 
Keeping the bloom is keeping successful. A vir- 
tuoso who had been before audiences all his life 
and who wore a row of medals kings had pinned 
to him, told me he never picked up his violin to 
play that he did not feel he was just glimpsing 
the possibilities of his instrument, not the master 
of it. He had kept the bloom on the peach. 

I have often been disappointed in hearing a 
famous speaker. He gave the lecture that made 
him famous, but the zest, the joy, the enthusiasm 
of the speaking were gone. He merely pro- 
nounced the words. It is the "spirit that giveth 
life." 



Go on Writing 

The writer sends his poem or story to the pub- 
lishing office, and never hears from it, or else gets 
back the cold form letter, "We regret that we 
cannot use your contribution. ' ' 

I know full well the hurt the young writer 



YES, YOU CAN! 105 

feels. I have been hurt over and over that way. 
Now that I am an editor myself, I never laugh 
at anything sent to me to publish, no matter how 
crude it may be, for I know it was the best that 
some aspirant could do, and I want to write a 
kind note of appreciation. There is mighty little 
sent an editor that he can use, just as there are 
very few platform applicants who can "put it 
over. ' ' 

Yet the editors and bureaumen keep hunting for 
good things. A bureauman told me not long ago 
that half of his time was spent in looking for real 
attractions, and the other half in dodging would- 
be attractions. 

Go on writing, if you feel the urge to write. 
That is a mental playground. After you have had 
the fun of writing something, it matters little 
whether it is ever printed or not. Perhaps it is 
far better for the rest that it is not printed. Like- 
ly, half the printed output would be more useful 
to the world as blank paper. 



Here is a song-writer who sees it rightly. In 
his letter to a magazine, he says : 

"lama conductor on the N. Y. C. railroad — and a 
song writer. The song writing is a sideline with me, 



106 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

but I get a good deal of enjoyment out of it. It is 
difficult for me to tell you which, gives me the greater 
amusement — sitting up to the 'wee sma' hours' try- 
ing to make a proper melody out of the muse, or read- 
ing the rejection slips of New York music publishers. 
I should worry ! As long as I am able to pull freight 
for Uncle Sam I can laugh at rejection slips." 

And the magazine editor joyfully comments : 

"It was Rosseau, as we remember, who remarked 
that no man ought to be dependent upon literature for 
a livelihood. It should be a glorious side-line to his 
regular job of farming, stevedoring or plumbing. We 
congratulate you ! It would give us less pain, in send- 
ing out our own rejection slips, if we knew that every 
one who received them had a good job and was writ- 
ing for the fun of it. ' ' 



Then Get a "Meal-Ticket" 

But yon say, "If they don't hire me, I'll 
starve. ' ' 

No ! Be natural. The bird goes right on sing- 
ing. The flower goes on blossoming. The flower 
does not go to the Department of Agriculture and 
ask for a permit to blossom. The fish does not 
go to some whale and say, "Please may I swim!" 



YES, TOU CAN! 107 

The bird does not even ask Mr. Carnegie to 
endow him while he sings. The bird perches in 
any tree he prefers and just pours out his soul 
as he feels. No admissions at the gate. No pa- 
trons and patronesses. No passing of the hat. 
No matter whether you listen or not. Presently 
the bird feels hungry. He stops the concert and 
puts a sign on his studio-door : 



Gone to dinner. Back when I get 
my stomach full. 

A. Bird 



Then A. Bird goes out and rustles for worms 
and bugs. Or if it is wormless or bugless day, 
he fills his stomach with whatever the ornithologi- 
cal Hoover orders, and then flies back and resumes 
the Hallelujah Chorus right where he left off be- 
fore dinner. 

And remember the flower goes on blossoming, 
but roots for a living all the time. 

That is the message to you and me. If we can- 
not market our thimble-products to make a liv- 
ing, we'll naturally have to get a "meal-ticket." 
We '11 have to saw wood or carry a hod or do some- 
thing to earn our board and keep. And we '11 have 
to do our singing and blossoming between times. 



108 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

Some of the happiest, most successful people I 
know, have to work all day at their 1 1 meal-ticket ' ' 
jobs behind counters, at ticket- windows, swinging 
axes or washing dishes. But after their work 
hours you see them at their "thimble- jobs" — 
singing, playing, reading, studying, writing, 
painting, designing, inventing. And they do not 
look upon their "meal-ticket" job as drudgery, 
but love it as a live-preserver to float them as 
they play the games that call. 

A person who has only a "meal-ticket" job is 
really to be pitied as much as the person without 
a job, for he is not being what he was created 
to be. He is not living, he is merely existing. 

And the "thimble- job" person is equally to be 
pitied, if he goes hungry in this world of plenty. 
He is a failure to the extent he is unhappy from 
hunger. I knew a good violinist who fiddled him- 
self to skin and bone in an attic, and mourned 
because nobody else loved his fiddle. But if he 
loved it and got joy out of it, why worry about 
the rest? 

I knew a pretty fair artist who nearly starved 
because he could not market his pictures after 
painting them. He used to wail that the world 
did not appreciate his art. Both fiddler and artist 
should have developed their batteries of good 
sense along with their art. They should have 
found "meal-tickets." I vividly remember the 



YES, YOU CAN! 109 

painter, because I had to collect rent from him 
every month. I mean, I was supposed to collect 
the rent each month, but almost every time I tried 
to collect, he would tell me such a sad tale of 
want and worldly neglect, that I would lend him 
some money and further pauperize his art. 

Upon fuller reflection, I may be wrong. I think 
now the painter found his " meal-ticket ' ' job in 
working me. 



Don't "Work for a Living" 

0, the most tasteless, unsatisfying existence is 
just "working for a living. " It is working for a 
dying. It is slow suicide. It is keeping the body 
alive and letting the mind and heart die. Change 
"working for a living" to living for a work. 
Don't live on the skim-milk, rise to the cream. 
Get a "thimble- job" if you have to work at it 
for nothing and board yourself ! Get a side-line, 
get a fad. Collect stamps, scalps or tin cans. 
Play golf. Organize a society — anything to start 
your batteries. 

Often our "thimble-job" — our Big Business — is 
something we cannot market to the world at all, 
and our "meal-ticket" job is some notable work 
in the world's estimation. Often they mix. Per- 



110 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

haps J. Pierpont Morgan would not have been 
such a successful financier if he had not allowed 
himself to become such an enthusiastic art col- 
lector. 

Don't be an old bachelor or maid of all work. 
Hold on to your "meal-tickets," but follow the 
"thimble" calls, fall in love with your real work 
and marry it. 

' ' I am happy today, ' ' wrote Eobert Louis Stev- 
enson, "because I have done good work." 



CHAPTER VI 

WHY AM I NOT HAPPIER? 

Press More Buttons 

YOU and I have asked that question, "Why 
am I not happier ? ' ' Some of us have said, 
1 i I have found my work, but it seems as tho 
the older I get the unhappier I become. ' ' That is, 
the more we " succeed,' ' the more we fail! 

The other night a man led me thru a door into 
a dark room. I . stood there helpless until he 
pressed a button and one light shone around us. 
Then I saw we were in a vast shadowy room. 
There were the dim outlines of printing-presses 
around me, rows of them filling that room. 

"Why aren't these presses running ?" I asked 
him. 

"The pressmen are on a strike,' ' said the man. 

It was a very unhappy, very unsuccessful print- 
ing plant. And yet it was filled with a great 
equipment of the most successful machinery. 
There were six floors of a great building success- 
fully equipped and yet very unsuccessful, all 
standing there idle and dark. 

The next night I saw a force of men enter the 
111 



112 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIEE 

plant. They pressed button after button and the 
lights began to gleam from every window of the 
building. A man pressed a button beside a press 
and it began to hum. Another man pressed the 
button on the next press and it began to hum. 
Soon row after row of presses were humming. 

The strike had been settled. The plant was 
again running successfully. 



Can we not find an answer to the question, 
i ' Why am I not happier ' ' in noting how the print- 
ing plant became happier? It had to light up, 
settle the strikes, press the buttons and speed up 
to capacity. 

There are armies of incompetents, drifters, 
loafers, aimless souls just existing day by day 
and sliding along in the line of least resistance. 
They are like the dark, silent printing plant with 
no vision of their own dimensions nor equipment. 
There are more armies not getting anywhere be- 
cause they have a strike on with the Proprietor. 
They are even unhappier. 

There are others who have pressed a button or 
two and have a part of their machinery running. 
They are getting some happiness. Others are 
running more of their machinery. None of us 
have gotten up to full capacity. There is more 



WHY AM I NOT HAPPIEE? 113 

happiness for each of us by pressing more but- 
tons. 

Suppose there were ten batteries to this flash- 
light and only one of them was shining, how suc- 
cessful would it be? Ten percent successful and 
ninety percent failure. Is not that the case with 
most of us? We are idle, or we are letting one 
or two of our talent batteries shine forth — enough 
to run our shop or keep our house, and sitting on 
the lid of the rest of our abilities. 



The world spends a lot of its time getting com- 
petents to repair the botch work of incompetents. 
The incompetents themselves are the greatest suf- 
ferers. They get little joy out of their work. 
They do their work under protest, hence it be- 
comes punishment. If they could find their 
"thimbles" and know the joy of wholeheartedly 
letting their light shine, they would be trans- 
formed. That careless stenographer might be- 
come a happy shopkeeper. That botch tailor 
might become a fine electrician, and that sleepy 
postal clerk might become the livest kind of a 
writer. And if a great thimble- awakening could 
come into their lives, they would throw new de- 
votion into these meal-ticket jobs as they saw 
them making possible their development. 



114 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

Set the prize before them, give them a motive, 
and you'll not have to drive them. Did you ever 
notice how a team lags when it is being driven 
with a hard load away from home, and how it 
pulls when going towards home? So many a boy 
has run away from a "good home" because he 
was driven to work without being given a motive 
to work. 

Children are not lazy. You never saw a child 
that was lazy if it was well. If they are not work- 
ing with all their hearts and strength it is because 
their hearts are not in their work. Do you notice 
that those same children who dawdle rebelliously 
over housework forced upon them, will joyfully 
work their heads off at building a playhouse in 
the back yard? Then why not turn workhouse 
into playhouse? Get them interested in their job 
and they do it with a shout. 

I never worked harder in my life than the day 
I was a little boy helping a groceryman move his 
stock half a mile to a new store-room. It was 
the privilege of carrying candy and things to eat. 
That groceryman understood boys, and he got 
fifty of them to work all day by making them see 
what a privilege it was. He never paid us a cent ! 
I think we would have felt insulted if he had. 

I wish I could hold this flashlight before the 
tramps, misfits and down-and-out-ers along the 
street, idle and unproductive as the printing plant 



WHY AM I NOT HAPPIER? 115 

in the strike, and say to them : ' ' No matter how 
battered and rusted and short-circuited you are, 
you are a flashlight. Come, press the buttons, 
one by one. Get into the game, speed up and find 
your happiness grow. ' ' 



"How do you measure the value of an em- 
ployee ?" the general manager of a large insti- 
tution was recently asked. 

"By the degree of supervision he requires. 
The less supervision he needs, no matter what he 
is doing, the more valuable he becomes." 

Failures and Successes 

I am sorry for the man who says, "This is the 
worst town on the map. ' ' He is helping to make 
it so. I am sorry for the man who says, "People 
never used me right." He never used people 
right. I am sorry for the man who says, "Every- 
body is out for the coin. Beat 'em to it. What's 
there in it for me? I'm not in business for my 
health. Come across with the dough!" Poor 
little runt! He is not in business at all. He is 
just in the daily job of robbing himself of the 
joy of life and turning himself into an embalmed 



116 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

cash-register. He follows his nose around, and 
the only world he knows is the path from where 
he sleeps to where he grinds. He shuts in every 
gleam of his batteries unless somebody pays him 
money. 

By the time he has scraped together a big pile 
of money, his poor old carcass wears out, dries 
up and blows away, and his children's lives are 
blighted squabbling over the estate. 

I am sorry for the alleged merchant who keeps 
his store placarded with flaming "selling out be- 
low cost" banners, who "undersells everybody," 
who runs "the cheapest store on earth," and 
whose main business is to unload shoddy goods 
upon ignorant customers. 

But I like to go into a store where the proprie- 
tor says, "My store is my playground. I get 
a lot of joy running a good store that I can be 
proud of, and stocked with goods that I am proud 
of. It is a pleasure to sell good goods at right 
prices. Salesmanship is being a big brother to 
every customer. It is a pleasure to sell them right 
things, so that the people say the goods are good 
like the man who sold them to us. Eunning a 
store is just as much art as painting a picture. ' ' 

That merchant is a success. 

I am sorry for the banker with the shifty eye 
and the metallic laugh, who never tells you any- 
thing above a whisper, and looks furtively around 



WHY AM I NOT HAPPIER? 117 

as he whispers. He never thinks outside of dol- 
lars. But I like to go into the bank where the 
banker looks me straight in the face and smiles 
a wholesome smile. He is the man the farmer 
comes to for financial advice and credit. He is the 
man the manufacturer seeks for counsel. His 
constant thought is how to make every dollar do 
its utmost with safety to the interests of all. He 
can be one of the community's greatest teachers 
of honesty as he teaches faith in meeting financial 
obligations, even when he sues some laggard. 

That banker is a success. 

I am sorry for the pettifogging lawyer that 
haunts the courthouse corridors to fatten like a 
vulture on the unfortunate on the battlefields of 
life. He is the Esau, the Judas of modern life. 
But I am proud to meet the lawyer who says, 
"I am a lawyer because I could not be anything 
else. The law appeals to me. I love it. It is 
a wonderful profession. I am just as happy — yes, 
happier — when I keep people out of lawsuits than 
when they get into them. I am happy when I can 
induce them to settle their troubles out of court. ,, 
That lawyer becomes the honored and trusted 
friend of the community. Fathers leave this earth 
secure in the knowledge that their families and 
dependents will be cared for by such a trustee. 
He stands a Gibraltar among men. 

That lawyer is a success. 



118 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

I am sorry for the newspaperman with the 
cynical view of life. God knows he sees the weak, 
selfish, sordid, cynical side of life more than any 
other, bnt God pity him when he allows it to get 
into his heart. When he gets to the place where 
he sells his opinions to the highest bidder and 
lets his advertisers dictate his policies, or has 
no policies, he is a very nnhappy little peanut. 
But I like to meet the newspaperman who says, 
"I love the business and couldn't be happy at 
anything else. I love to run a clean, bright, truth- 
ful paper. I am father confessor to this commu- 
nity, I preach to more people here than anyone 
else, I dare to tell the truth. I am shaping the 
life of the people." When you open a newspa- 
per and say, " There's no news in the paper to- 
day,' ' be glad that the editor did not print all 
he knows. A real newspaper is known, not for 
what it prints, but for what it refuses to print. 
What it prints is constructive, never destructive. 

That editor is a success. 

I am sorry for the teacher who says, "I am a 
fool to stick in this business. I am underpaid, 
and I am going to use it as a stepping-stone to 
something else. There is nothing in teaching as 
a profession." Get out of it today, brother. You 
are injuring it and yourself. But when I hear a 
man or woman say, "I teach year after year be- 
cause I love to teach, because I love to work with 



WHY AM I NOT HAPPIER? 119 

young people, because I feel that this is my place 
where I can be happiest/ ' then I want to bow 
low before a real teacher with a call. Happy the 
pupils who can study under such a teacher. 

That teacher is a success. 

I am sorry for the people who have to stop in 
many of the hotels in the small towns of the 
United States. And I am sorry for the people 
who keep them, for they do not keep the hotel, 
the hotel keeps them. They have no pride nor 
joy in making them comfortable, clean and invit- 
ing. But here and there is a hotelkeeper who 
makes a bright, clean, welcome home for tired 
travelers. That person is a minister, an artist 
and a blessing to the public. 

That landlord is a success. 

I could go calling the community roll of Little 
Businessmen and Big Businessmen. Some of the 
finest players and greatest successes never get 
into type. They peddle papers, shine shoes, wash 
dishes, drive drays and shift the scenery of the 
community playhouse. 



Educational Snobbery 

The advertisements of certain correspondence 
schools delight in showing a prosperous, well-fed 
man sitting at a desk giving orders to a poorly- 



120 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

dressed man on the other side of the rail, who 
carries a dinner-bucket in his hand. 

The man at the desk is the boss; the dinner- 
pail man works for him. The inference is that 
the man at the desk is a success because he is the 
boss, while the dinner-bucket man is a failure, 
and if the dinner-bucket man will only take eleven 
lessons in this justly famous correspondence 
school he will drop the pail, sit at the desk and be 
a success ! 

Such false appeals are an affront to the spirit 
of a democracy. All honest service is equally 
honorable and equally successful. Our only real 
success comes not in raising our salary, but in 
raising our efficiency. Our success starts in do- 
ing the things we are naturally equipped to do. 
Dropping the dinner-pail and sitting at the desk 
may mean a rise in salary and a fall in success. 
The man with the dinner-pail may be more suc- 
cessful than the man at the desk, for he may be 
happier. It is a question of each man finding his 
place. One kind of ability is needed to carry the 
dinner-pail and quite another to sit at the desk. 

"We can raise your salary," shouts one school. 
Another uses up a costly page to show that one 
out of twenty-five with a college education suc- 
ceeds greatly, while one out of 2,500 without col- 
lege education succeeds greatly. All Outside talk. 
By all means get the college education to raise 



WHY AM I NOT HAPPIER? 121 

efficiency, not salary. Let the salary come as the 
by-product, and it generally follows. But don't 
get the cart before the horse or your world is go- 
ing to run backward. You cannot measure suc- 
cess by salary. 

The janitor of this building and the one who 
scrubs its floors may be more successful than the 
owner of it, for they may be happier and getting 
more out of life, because giving more out of their 
lives. 



We Are Free and Equal 

I don 't care how many gold bands and diamonds 
you have on the outside of your flashlight, how 
much are you shining? Did you ever stop to 
think, there is more unhappiness in big houses 
than in little houses? There are more rich fail- 
ures than poor failures. 

The Declaration of Independence says that all 
men are created free and equal. That does not 
mean all men are created free to do as they please, 
nor to have equal fortunes nor the same size 
farms, houses or bank accounts, any more than 
it means that all men should have the same num- 
ber of carpenters' tools. Money, lands and power 
are merely tools to be held and used by those who 
have the ability to use them properly, and to be 
taken away from them when they do not use them 



122 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

properly, which means for the benefit of all hu- 
manity. To give a lot of money to a spendthrift 
would be just as foolish as to give a set of carv- 
ing tools to a woman who cannot sharpen a lead- 
pencil. We cannot expect to have until we get 
fitted to use, else we would hurt ourselves. 

The Declaration means that all men are created 
equal in the right to ' * life, liberty and the pursuit 
of happiness." 

Pursuing happiness does not mean chasing it. 
There is the tragedy of this world. Pursuing hap- 
piness means playing the games of life and letting 
the happiness come to us. It always comes when 
we play the game fairly. You and I and every- 
body are like big and little jugs floating in a great 
ocean of happiness. All we have to do is to pull 
the corks and open up, and the happiness runs 
in. All the big and little jugs get equally full 
of happiness. 

Chasing happiness is like pulling the jugs across 
the ocean to fill them, and running the risk of 
smashing them along the way. Big Business is 
just pulling the corks ! 



Each of Us a Monopolist 

Each of us is a flashlight. Our success is not 
in getting the gold bands, the diamonds or the big 



WHY AM I NOT HAPPIER? 123 

house, but in shining. Each of us has this one 
job of shining. Nobody can compete with us in it, 
nor take it away from us. We have a natural 
monopoly of Being Ourself. Only one person in 
the world can be Ourself. And Being Ourself is 
being as successful as all the people in the world 
can ever hope to be ! 

It does not matter in the least what kind of 
talent-batteries we have, nor how many. It does 
not matter whether we have a talent to dig a 
Panama Canal or a city drain. It does not mat- 
ter whether we have a talent to run a Waldorf- 
Astoria, a boarding-house or a bungalow. It 
does not matter whether we have a talent to run 
a Marshall Field's or a corner grocery. It does 
not matter whether we have the talent to be a 
Caruso or a choir-singer. It does not matter 
whether we have a talent to work for our country 
as President or as private. 

But it does matter that we let our talents have 
full play. That is happiness. Paderewski can 
be no happier using his wonderful musical talents 
than you can be using your musical talents at 
your own piano. The big boss giving orders can 
be no happier than you and I obeying them, if 
all three of us are letting our own talents have 
as full play. 

The astronomer can discover no more of heaven 



124 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

with his telescope than the blind man on the street- 
corner without eyes. 

Only one thing about a talent matters — that it 
be used. Use it and we are happy and grow. Isn 't 
it amusing how you and I have envied other peo- 
ple's talents, when ours alone could make us 
happy? We have wanted other people's places, 
when getting them would have made us very un- 
happy and out-of -place. 



Not Playing for the Grate Receipts 

When did you stop playing? When you turned 
a flipflop for the fun of it you were playing. But 
when you got to turning flipflops for the gate re- 
ceipts, you got to working. When you got to 
turning flipflops so you could get your name in 
the paper and get recognized as the greatest flip- 
floppist in the land, then you got into sad, hard, 
thankless work. 

We need gate receipts. Let us talk more about 
that in the next chapter. But the mistake was 
made when we got to thinking our pay was in the 
gate receipts or the big type instead of in the joy 
of flipflopping. 

The community is just our larger playground. 
Business, industry, commerce are just larger 



WHY AM I NOT HAPPIEE? 125 

games with finer toys and tools. Let us not take 
ourselves so seriously. Not one of us is indis- 
pensable. Take any of us out of the community 
and the world will wag right on. Every job in 
the community is just another opportunity for 
us to have a good time, play the game, kick up our 
heels, clear our brain and let our light shine. 

The ocean does not need the fish; the fish need 
the ocean. 

I used to think that a minister was just a man 
who got up in church on Sundays and preached. 
Bless them all who minister that way ! But now 
I am learning that everyone who has a good time 
and plays the game of life fairly is a minister, 
because playing is shining, and shining is minis- 
tering. 



Enlarge Your Playground 

So to be happier, ENLARGE YOUR PLAY- 
GROUND. Find your vocations and your avoca- 
tions. Run your home, your store, your shop, 
your farm, your office. Yes ! 

But be sure all your machinery and batteries 
are running, both in your business and out of it. 
Get into more games. There is a church near 
you that needs some of your light. Get behind 



126 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

it. There is a neighbor over the fence needing 
you. Get under his burdens, help him solve his 
problems. There are public movements calling 
for help, calling to you. There are schools, clubs, 
causes, a hundred of them, needing you. As you 
discover them, and throw your heart and energies 
into them, you find your playground enlarging, 
you find the whole community is a part of it, and 
your happiness grows. You are growing. 

In each community are a few doing so many 
things outside of their bread-and-butter business. 
They take the lead and bear the burdens for the 
public. They work hard, but they are needing no 
sympathy, they should be congratulated. They 
are the happy people. They are the best paid. 
Join them ! Lose your life in service and you find 
it coming back to you radiant — all the batteries 
shining. 



The Conductor Converted Us 

There is no work that can not be made luminous 
with more light out of our own lives. A conductor 
on a railway train taught me that. 

A hundred mad, wet, bedraggled, half-frozen 
people waited at a junction point. There was no 
operator there, so we could not tell how late the 



WHY AM I NOT HAPPIEE? 127 

train was. The station was too small to hold the 
half of ns, so many stood out in the sleety storm 
of that January day where January days certainly 
can be raw — in the mountains of West Virginia. 
What we said about railroading in general as we 
shivered in that storm must have kept the record- 
ing angel busy. 

When that belated train pulled into Bluestone, 
it was about two hours late, and a hundred cold, 
wet, abused people climbed aboard. We wanted 
to fight somebody. Each of us had a chip on 
his shoulder. One word would have started a 
riot. The cars were damp and uninviting. The 
sun didn't shine — there wasn't any sun! We 
hadn't been used right. The babies cried — mis- 
erable little brats ! Life wasn't worth living. God 
had resigned! 

A miracle happened. The car-door opened and 
a conductor entered, with a face like a sweet- 
apple-pie, all lit up. "Good morning!" he said, 
"glad to see you." Glad to see that woebegone 
crowd ! "Folks, we 're sorry to be so late, but it is 
a hard run today, and we're doing our best. 
Please be patient with us. Tickets, please." 

That conductor went to the first man. "Good 
morning," he said as he shook his hand. "Glad 
to see you. Going to Jimville? Well, you'll get 
there about 10 :30 if we stay on the rails. ' ' 

' ' Good morning, ' ' he said to the next man as he 



128 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

shook his hand and punched his ticket. "Good 
morning,' ' he said to the next and to the next. 
"Oh, bless that baby! Mamma, what a pretty 
baby ! ' ' That man was treating the earful of pas- 
sengers, mad, wet, bedraggled as they were, as tho 
they were guests in his parlor. 

I rubbed my eyes. Am I dreaming? Am I 
dead and this the millennium express? You 
could hear the chips dropping from the shoul- 
ders of everybody as that conductor came down 
the aisle. The sun began to shine. The birds 
began to sing, the babies — the blessed little an- 
gels — began to crow. God reconsidered His resig- 
nation, simply because one man was letting more 
light shine than he was paid for. 

There was an old brute — another old brute — 
sitting in the seat beside me. He had his face 
hard set and his mouth pulled down. He hadn't 
been treated right, and that conductor wasn't go- 
ing to softsoap him. That wasn't no way to run 
a railroad — make a man stand two hours out in 
that rain and bring his ' l rheumatiz ' ' back on him. 
0, how he would hand it to that conductor when 
he came up to him! And presently that conduc- 
tor came up to him and took his hand and said, 
"Good morning! Glad to see you." The old 
brute's face slipped! "Good morning!" he 
smiled back like a lamb. Nobody could frown at 
that conductor. 



WHY AM I NOT HAPPIEK* 129 

I sat there with a warm heart. I am going 
to thank that conductor now when he can hear it, 
and not wait and pnt it into the resolutions of 
respect. 

I went up into the smoker, where he had his 
tickets spread out over the front seat. i l Mr. Con- 
ductor I want to thank you for what you did. ' ' 

"What did I do?' ' he asked, with the smile still 
in place. "Sit down, old man, glad to see you. 
What did I do?" I think that was the finest of it 
all. He had been kind to people so long he didn't 
notice it. If I had done such a thing I would have 
put it in the paper next day. 

"Man! When you came into that car this 
morning it was like Daniel going into the lions' 
den. We were all mad and we wanted to scrunch 
your bones. But you came in and smiled and 
said, 'Good morning, glad to see you,' like you 
meant it. And I am telling you what everybody 
on this train feels. We feel good, everything is 
all right, and we love you. Man, go on doing that. 
I have lived on trains about every day for the 
last twenty-five years, and I have never seen a 
finer thing than you are doing. You are a minister 
to travelers. You have a great work shaking 
hands with lonesome travelers on these mountain 
runs. You don't realize what a handshake means 
to them. ' ' 

His eyes began to moisten. "Old man, you are 



130 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIEE 

spreading it on pretty thick, but I guess you are 
right. The people do like to be treated that way, 
and I like to treat them that way. Just look at 
what they did to me the other day." He pulled 
out a watch — one of the finest I ever saw. 

"Look inside." Inside the lid I read engraved 
how this watch had been presented to him by the 
officers, employees and patrons of the road as an 
expression of his kindness and faithfulness in the 
service. I learned that the people had spontane- 
ously made up a purse all up and down the line. 
Nobody was allowed to give more than a dollar 
and children gave pennies. 

There may be higher salaried men in railroad 
employ, but there are no more successful and bet- 
ter loved men than this conductor. A high offi- 
cial afterwards told me he was one of the best 
assets of that road. He is conducting people to a 
kinder life. 



What a blessing to himself and all around him 
is the man at the ticket-window, at the postoffice 
window, over the counter, over the dinner-table, 
on the street or in any other place of public or 
private contact, who can cheer as well as serve. 
And what a handicap is the grouchiness of the 
person, be he ever so efficient, who is ' ' deficient in 
radiation ! ' ' 



WHY AM I NOT HAPPIER? 131 

There are two ways of saying, "No. " One way 
turns yon pleasantly back, the other way rouses 
your aggressiveness. 

I used to wonder why everybody was so grouchy 
towards me. It took me forty-seven years to dis- 
cover that it was because I was so grouchy to- 
wards everybody! 



Give the Nickels and Dimes 

Are not many of us in the mood of the man who 
has millions and generously wants to give great 
amounts for great causes, but goes around holding 
tight to the nickels and dimes, unheeding the 
thousand calls for his small change f We yearn to 
do great things for the world, but we do not see 
that some of the greatest work, after all, is giving 
out the daily nickels and dimes of good cheer and 
helpfulness. 

Really, the world needs our many small gifts 
more than our occasional millions. Great struc- 
tures are made from little bricks. We build our 
life of the daily nickels and dimes. The big twen- 
ties and fifties are not much worn, but the tired 
pennies and dollar bills are the currency that sus- 
tain the business of life. 

So often we live with the idea that our success 



132 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

and happiness are something we are going to get 
after while. Ever so many of us think we even 
have to die to attain happiness. No, it is a prob- 
lem of right living, not of right dying. Success 
and happiness are not goals ahead, but heartbeats 
along the way. We can be just as successful today 
as we ever can be — just as successful as anybody 
in the world. 

When is a bird a success ? When it gets longer 
feathers! When it gets stuffed? When is a rail- 
road train a success ? When it gets to New York 
or Chicago ? Is not a bird just as successful today 
as it can ever be f Is not a railroad train just as 
much a success at the smallest country station or 
anywhere along the track so long as it makes its 
time, pulls its load and does what it was built 
to do? 

And is not the slowest freight train just as much 
a success as the swiftest express? Would not each 
be a failure trying to be the other? 



Keep the Watch Running 

Add to the picture of the flashlight this watch 
picture. I hold in my hand a watch. What is a 
watch ? 

A watch is made up of many parts — big parts 



WHY AM I NOT HAPPIEE? 133 

and little parts — some of them so small you have 
to use a glass to see them. It is made up of lids, 
dial, posts, regulator, springs, hands, big wheels, 
little wheels, jewels and other things. Some of 
the wheels go this way, some go that way, some 
go fast and some go slow. Some make noise and 
some " gumshoe " it. Some parts do not seem to 
do a thing but stand around and hold up the rest. 
I ask the regulator, "What are you doing? " "I 
am regulating, ' ' he says. I ask the wheel, "What 
are you doing ?" "I am wheeling." I ask the 
spring, "What are you doing ?" "I am spring- 
ing. J ' 

Yes, each part is doing some special thing. But 
each part is doing vastly more — it is helping to 
keep time. That is the Big Business of the watch. 
Every part must do its bit. Every part is neces- 
sary to every other part. If there is one part 
that is not doing its duty — if there is one cog that 
sticks out of line, the whole watch is affected. 

The name of the watch is THIS COMMUNITY. 
Indeed, its name is the world. Every person in 
this community is a part of the community watch 
— every man, woman, boy, girl. 

I ask one, "Who are you?" "Oh, I am the 
big wheel of this community." All right, go on 
big- wheeling. I ask another, "What are you?" 
"I am the regulator." All right, go on regulat- 
ing. Go on being postmaster, banker, minister, 



134 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

doctor, lawyer, mechanic, housewife. But remem- 
ber that every other person is a part of the same 
watch. No two parts are interchangeable. Each 
must be in his place and do his work, or the watch 
cannot run perfectly. 

The mainspring cannot get along without the 
hairspring, and both of them fail without the reg- 
ulator. All of them fail without the tiny screws 
and pegs and jewels that hold them together. The 
city mayor is necessary, and the marshal and the 
merchant. But the drayman is just as necessary 
— and the butcher, the baker, the candlestick- 
maker. 

The pretty dial-face girl may be necessary in 
front of the restaurant, but the blessed old 
wrinkle-faced cook is just as necessary out in the 
cook-room. Put the cook at the cash-register and 
the dial-face back at the dough, and the clock 
would be in trouble. 

So bosses are necessary, but boss-ees are just 
as necessary. Generals are necessary, but they 
are helpless without soldiers to general. And 
soldiers are helpless without commanders. Cap- 
ital is necessary, but labor is just as necessary. 
How foolish, then, for one wheel to try to dispense 
with or override another in the same watch! 

We must find our "thimble" and help every- 
body else to find his. We cannot be successful 
when those around us are unsuccessful, save as 



WHY AM I NOT HAPPIES? 135 

we are trying to help them succeed. One part of 
the town cannot be fully happy while another part 
of it is nnhappy. 

There cannot be a donble standard of morals, 
for we rise and fall together. I am my brother's 
keeper — and my sister's too. Don't scold the bad 
man — help him. Don't scold the bad woman — 
help her ! We are all parts of the human watch. 

Success is never privately owned. The Big- 
Businessman is interested in his own business, but 
he is interested in all other business. He is inter- 
ested in his competitor. He is interested in his 
home and in all homes. He is working for him- 
self most of all when he is working for all. He 
gets behind every forward movement. He asks 
just one question, "Is it for the good of the com- 
munity ? Then put me down for it. ' ' 

The Big Businessman is director of the com- 
munity music. He takes the many clashing, jan- 
gling players and instruments, tunes them to- 
gether, and creates the symphony orchestra. 

Henry Ford has the Big Business vision. He 
says, ' ' Idleness is the cause of war. We must sup- 
ply the remedy necessary to kill the disease. It 
is work. I am trying to do my part, and to help 
others to do their part." He slaps his men on 
the back. "I like to know my boys and I like to 
have them know me. That is the only way to get 
the best out of life." 



136 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIEE 

Big Business Is Brotherhood 

In other words, Big Business means being sym- 
metrical in our lives and functioning properly — 
physically, mentally, morally. It means being 
well-balanced, not lop-sided. It means special- 
izing but not 'monopolizing. 

Look at the fine locomotive pulling the express 
train. Little Business means for it to run amuck 
and regardless of all other trains, and that means 
sorrow, failure and disaster for itself, sooner or 
later. Big Business means for it to specialize on 
its own run, but for it to take the sidings, to blow 
the whistle, ring the bell, carry signal-lights and 
make travel safe and happy for all. 



CHAPTER VII 

GET YOUR PAY NOW 

In Your Heart, Not in Your Pocket 

THEEE is only one proof of our success and 
pay for it— HAPPINESS. The more we 
succeed in being what we are created to be, 
the more happiness comes to us. How successful 
we are always means how happy we are. We put 
our pay into our heart, not into our pocket. All 
that goes into our pocket i^ bookkeeping, fuel, 
tools and toys. 

Happiness is not success, it is the harmony, 
peace and joy that result from success. 

One of the world's pet delusions is that success 
and salary are synonyms. Success is shining. 
Salary is what the world is willing to pay for our 
light. 

A chunk of coal is just as successful as a dia- 
mond — more successful from the utilitarian 
standpoint — and if you shoveled diamonds like 
coal, the diamond would sell lower than the coal. 
But the diamond gets the big pricemark because 
people who want to wear something their neigh- 
bor cannot have, bid high for the diamond. They 

137 



138 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

would bid just as high for a chunk of coal to wear 
if it were just as scarce. 

If there were only ten blacksmiths in the world, 
each would draw a salary of a million a year. 
If there were a million Carusos or Rockefellers 
in the world, each would get a blacksmith's salary. 
Yet blacksmith, Caruso and Rockefeller are all 
equally successful as they let their own talents 
shine. 

Men with talents to create and general much 
of the world's work are so scarce that the world 
bids high for them. Men who have talents to take 
and execute their orders are just as successful, 
but they are so plentiful they often get the low 
price labels. 



Salaries Often Confessions 

Many great salaries are the world's admission 
of its wrong perspective of service values. 

Here is Charley Chaplin, film hero of the pen- 
guin feet. Charley was reputed to receive at one 
time a salary around a million a year for letting 
some of his talents shine on the screen. How suc- 
cessful is Charley? I do not know, for I do not 
know how much talent he is using and how much 
he is suppressing. That is, I do not know how 
happy he is. 



GET YOUE PAY NOW 139 

President "Wilson receives a salary of $75,000 
a year. I know people who think that Charley 
must be ten times as successful as our great war 
president if he gets ten times the salary. This 
is the world's confession that it would pay ten 
times as much to be amused as to be governed, 
that's all. Perhaps each is where he can best 
be natural. Put President Wilson before the 
comedy camera, put Charley in the White House, 
and I tremble for the results. Some ambassador 
would be hit in the face with a custard pie ! 

"Bud" Fisher, creator of those cartoon twins 
of trouble, "Mutt and Jeff," was reputed to re- 
ceive $150,000 a year for his drawings. How suc- 
cessful is "Bud"? Eeally, I do not know. I do 
not see how anybody with this cynical view of life 
he and many other popular cartoonists and stage 
heroes love to portray — the rough-and-tumble of 
dissipation, the travesties on home life — can be 
truly happy. 

But I do know that many a minister, many a 
college professor gets the hundredth part of 
"Bud's" stipend for their light from as much or 
more genius. And I know that many people think 
that "Bud" must therefore be a hundred times 
as successful as these preachers and teachers. 
But this is merely the world's confession of how 
it values their output. The world would pay a 
hundred times as much to see somebody hit in the 



140 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

head with a brick as to see him hit in the head 
with an idea. 

The world often pays highest for the lowest ap- 
peals, and lowest for the highest appeals. It be- 
grudges pennies to go to heaven where it squan- 
ders fortunes to go to hell. It pays Eva Tanguay 
a fortune to be audacious on the stage where it 
would pay her a pittance to be useful off the stage. 

Go up and down the street and see the funny 
labels. See diamonds selling for junk and junk 
getting the diamond prices. See fools in limou- 
sines and kings afoot. See Shakespeare begging 
bread and chorus girls dining in lobster palaces. 

All these have their day and pass. True values 
stand eternal while today's fever-mists blow away. 
Don't be fooled by labels and the tumult and 
shouting in the street. Salaries have nothing to 
do with success. All nature is perfectly success- 
ful without any salary beyond board and keep. 



"From Fourteen Cents an Hour to Railroad 
President.' ' This from a cheap magazine ad 
printed for people who do not think, but only 
think they think. Either this brassband school 
turned a poor f ourteen-cent man into a good pres- 
ident, or it turned a good fourteen-cent man into 
a poor president. Go on developing, but bring us 



GET YOUR PAY NOW 141 

improved fruit, not improved labels, as the proof 
of your success. 

"From Log Cabin to White House !" As a 
boy I was fed up on this Fourth of July spread- 
eagle oratory. I was led to think that all of us 
could be president if we would try hard enough. 
Wouldn't the White House totter if we all tried 
to get there! The success of the White House 
rests upon millions of us staying in our cabins and 
letting our own light shine. 



Why We Take Money 

Are we not to take money for our work? Cer- 
tainly! We must take money for our work that 
we can go on working. I must take money for 
my work and you must take money for your work. 
We take money for our work in order that we 
may go on working, just as the engine burns coal 
in order that it can go on running. It does not 
run to burn coal, it burns coal to run. 

We go on eating that we can go on working. 
We do not go on working that we can go on eat- 
ing. We eat to live ; we do not live to eat. 

Money is the BUY-product. Do not get the 
cart before the horse. We cannot be successful 
if we work for money. We cannot be completely 
successful if we do not demand money or other 



142 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LITE 

compensation for our work, if the one we serve 
is able to recompense us. We take money to be 
kind and courteous to our clients. We take money 
to be mannerly — to be honest with ourselves and 
our customers. To give things to people, even to 
our own children, without requiring them to ren- 
der service in return, is to pauperize them. When 
we give to people without requiring them to pay, 
we are as dishonest with them as they are with us 
if they take things from us without paying for 
them. They rob us of things and we rob them of 
the opportunity of paying for things. 

No business, in the common acceptance of busi- 
ness, is honestly conducted if it does not finance 
itself. It is not honest to the management nor 
to the patrons. Selling things " below cost" is 
the most expensive selling. It is selling right busi- 
ness methods, attacking stability and teaching 
dishonesty. 

Churches, schools, uplift associations are not 
expected to finance themselves — often they are 
failures if they do — but in the larger way, their 
beneficiaries must render adequate return for 
their help in growth and service, or these minis- 
trations have failed. The man who thinks " sal- 
vation is free," never gets any more salvation 
than he pays for. 

Paying for things is teaching us to value things. 
We charge admission to a lecture to help people 



GET YOUR PAY NOW 143 

appreciate it. They put something into it, they 
get something out of it. The biggest kicker gen- 
erally comes in on a "comp." He paid nothing, 
he got nothing. 

Nobody ever got something for nothing. That 
is why people who have everything done for them 
are not happy, and why people who have every- 
thing given them rarely amount to anything. 
That is why most charities fail. 



Big Business Is AU "C, 0, D." 

But the real pay is in our hearts. It is the joy 
of being what we are created to be — being in per- 
fect harmony and at rest, even in the most stren- 
uous action. No matter how hard the work or 
apparent struggle, we are at rest because soothed 
and sustained by the consciousness of being in 
our right place and of doing the right thing. 

We get our pay all ' ' collect on delivery. ' ' We 
get it out of our work, not out of our envelope. 
We collect it every moment like the bee collects 
the honey from the flowers, or we are poor col- 
lectors. Even tho we are working altruistically, 
we need not fool ourselves by saying, "Some day 
I'll be rewarded for this. Some day I'll be appre- 
ciated and thanked." No, get your joy of doing 



144 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

it now, on the Inside, and balance the books. 
Close the transaction now, or you are going to 
say this is an ungrateful world. 

Don't wait to be thanked; hurry on to avoid 
the kick. Do your good for the joy of doing, 
but don't wait for a receipt for your goodness; 
you'll need a poultice! 

I am to get some money for giving this lecture. 
That is not the pay for giving the lecture — that 
is merely balancing the books with committee, 
audience, speaker, bureau, printer, hotelman, rail- 
road, grocer, tailor and Uncle Sam. I am getting 
my pay minute by minute in the privilege of giv- 
ing the lecture — in the joy of saying to you out 
of my heart these things that seem to me true 
and self-evident. 

Big Businessmen believe in getting money with- 
out money getting them. They know its worth 
and worthlessness. They know its place is in the 
pocket, not in the heart, and they keep it in its 
place. They know it is a fine servant, a wonderful 
tool for service, but a bad boss. They hold their 
money in their hands as trust funds for humanity. 

And they know the danger of scattering these 
funds blindly over humanity under the alluring 
guises of much so-called charity and philanthropy. 
They know it is robbing the people of making 
their own effort. And burning incense to their 
own vanity ! 



GET YOUR PAY NOW 145 

All Can Be Artists 

"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." 

But all play and no work makes Jack an artist. 

For play is art. That is the cheering fact of 
living. We are all artists as we give out our 
natural products and find our joy in the giving. 
Any work is art work when we lose our sense of 
labor in it, and find joy in doing it. We do not 
want to quit, we do not watch the clock, we do 
not need vacations to rest up from it, for doing 
it rests and refreshes us. 

Art work is heart work. It is the finest play. 
If we go on needing many vacations and rest- 
spells, it is a pretty good sign we have not found 
our "thimbles," or there is a clog somewhere in 
our batteries. The more perfectly balanced the 
engine, the less it wears. 

I believe in vacations. I believe in playgrounds. 
I believe in vocations and avocations. But I be- 
lieve most of all in making our daily work our 
greatest playground. 

When we learn to find our holy-day every day 
in our work, we will not need to have so many 
holidays as we have them today. Concerns must 
knock off work, shut up shop, upset calculations 
and keep things in a turmoil for a week that there 
may be a day too often of dissipation and excess, 



146 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LITE 

called "celebrating" a holiday, which is generally 
an un-holyday. 



We think of Michaelangelo as an artist. He 
was expressing himself on the dome of St. Peter's 
— playing and praying, not for selfish gain. 
Shakespeare was certainly an artist. If he had 
said, "I shall write Hamlet to make myself fa- 
mous and get a lot of money for it, ' ' do you think 
he could have written it? 

Do you see why popularity kills art by seducing 
the artist from his ideals. He becomes an Out- 
sider instead of an Insider. Do you follow the 
writer of a book that catches on and becomes a 
"best seller" 1 His publishers say, "Hurry up 
and write some more best sellers so we can go 
on selling them and make a lot more money for 
you and us." And unless he goes on listening 
to the Inside call, he gets his genius adulterated 
with hurrah and egotism and produces a shelf of 
inferior stuff. 

That may be the reason why so many immortal 
artists got their immortality after their funeral. 



We think of Thomas A. Edison working in his 
laboratories day and night as the artist of in- 



GET YOUE PAY NOW 147 

vention. He is gray and famous. He goes on 
working because he has found his laboratories 
such a fascinating playground he often forgets 
to stop long enough to sleep. Indeed, you have 
read his recent statements about sleep and rest. 
He says we sleep too much, says three or four 
hours sleep are enough for anybody, and when 
we get more civilized we will not sleep at all ! He 
declares that he regards this as the most impor- 
tant discovery of his life, that we sleep too much. 

Generally speaking, it is the one who gets the 
least out of life, or puts the least into living, that 
needs the most sleep. "Please go 'way an' let 
me sleep/ ' 

You remember when the world wanted to honor 
him he hadn't time to stop playing to receive the 
honor ! San Francisco and the Pan-American Ex- 
position hung up millions of flags on Edison day 
out there and sent a special train across the con- 
tinent to get him and bring him triumphantly back 
to its portals to be greeted by the wizard of plants, 
Luther Burbank. The special train backed up to 
his laboratories, but the inventor was too busy 
at work to get aboard. Finally they prevailed 
upon him to get aboard in his regimentals, and he 
settled himself in his private car and went on with 
his work. The train sped westward past station 
after station where cheering crowds tried to get 
a glimpse of the wizard of electricity, but he paid 



148 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

no attention to anything but his notes and his 
work. His wife wired ahead, "I'll have him 
dressed by the time we get there." 

That is play ! 

Perhaps it is well that all people are not like 
Edison. It would be a very chemical, mechanical, 
unsocial world if we were all Edisons. Most 
wives would want to see more of their husbands, 
and there could not be any expositions, nor any- 
body to use inventions, for everybody would be 
so busy doing his own inventing. 

Edison has to go on being Edison. You and 
I have to go on being ourselves. As we do this 
we become just as successful as Edison. Just as 
much artists as Michaelangelo and Shake- 
speare. 



Years ago when Evangelist "Billy" Sunday 
began his remarkable career it was freely pre- 
dicted that he would not last very long. He was 
too intense, he worked too hard, he was "burn- 
ing the candle at both ends," he was "killing" 
himself. The other day, more than twenty years 
later, I saw him "kill" himself three times in one 
Sunday in a great city tabernacle before twenty 
thousand people. He spoke every moment with 
an intensity that seemed to burn up every ounce 



GET YOUR PAY NOW 149 

of energy. How could mortal man work as hard 
as he did and last? Yet after each sermon he 
jumped from his rostrum smiling and happy, re- 
freshed and rejuvenated by his play. He said to 
me that day, "This preaching is a lot more fun 
than playing ball. ' ' 



' 'Sadie," the Artist in Dough 

I discovered just as great an artist the other 
day, tho she will likely not get into the big type. 
She runs a little boarding-house over in a little 
town in New York state. She is an artist in 
dough. Her home is her playground. Her kitch- 
en is her studio. She has abolished work in the 
home and is the most painless housekeeper I have 
ever seen. 

" Sadie' ' was singing when I entered that home, 
singing out there in the kitchen over a hot cook- 
stove in July. She always sings at her work. 
She came smiling to answer my call. Yes, I could 
stay there if I could ' ' put up with things. ' ' 

There were more new and ingenious dishes on 
that dinnertable than I had dreamed of in my phi- 
losophy, and each one exquisitely prepared. It 
was right at the time when housekeepers were 
complaining they could not cook well with the war 



150 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

substitutes, but "Sadie" was doing wonders with 
cornmeal and barley-flour instead of wheat. "I 
have enjoyed working with the substitutes," she 
said. ' 1 1 have a grand time in my kitchen trying 
experiments with new dishes." 

And she was ! The ordinary things — the bread 
and meat and potatoes and coffee and pie — all had 
an appetizing rebirth as "Sadie" brought them 
to the table. I never knew potatoes could be so 
good, baked beans so toothsome, and pumpkin pie 
such a benediction. And her new dishes were as 
wonderful and numerous as Edison's inventions. 

A good many years she has sung in that kitchen, 
and the boys who boarded at her table and have 
gone to other parts of the world write letters back 
to her. There are no crowsfeet in her face, be- 
cause there is no drudgery in her housekeeping. 
May hers never become a lost art! "Sadie" will 
never grow old, nor "wear out," nor "beat her 
wings against a cage. ' ' 



The Aristocracy of Workmanship 

I believe the carpenter out there building a 
bungalow can be just as much an artist as Michael- 
angelo on St. Peter's dome, if he puts himself 



GET YOUR PAY NOW 151 

into his work as wholeheartedly and finds the 
same joy and pride in his work. 

I bow low before the finished worker anywhere. 
There is an aristocracy of achievement that 
touches all human effort. This hasty, commercial 
age has done too much to destroy it. There was 
once a carpenter who built the ponderous frame 
house to last for generations — put love, art, skill, 
honesty into that house — who would stand aghast 
at the rows of flimsy structures thrown together 
today. 

There was a furniture-maker, a cabinet-maker 
who built a table or a chair with the care and 
honesty he would want a watch built. He would 
stand aghast at the cheap veneered stuff that has 
too often taken the place of his choice product. 

I sat in the dining-room of a Southwestern hotel 
the other day and noted how the " marble' ' pillars 
were warping, cracking and peeling as unsea- 
soned soft wood insists upon doing. I wondered 
how many dishonest impulses such an environ- 
ment has inspired. I go into the ' ' bargain store ' ' 
and see the loads of shoddy stuff of every descrip- 
tion that people are lugging into their homes and 
do not wonder at their slow progress. 

One appreciates the fine old examples of book- 
binding, bootmaking, woodworking as he does the 
creations of painter, sculptor, author and com- 
poser. There is even a repair man who has made 



152 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

his fame for " doing a good job," who will not 
undertake anything unless he can do it just right, 
who scorns the shoddy, sloppy work. This is the 
age of hurry, when the cry is for profits more 
than products. Bring back the old day of long 
apprenticeships! Let us again "learn a trade" 
instead of press a button. 

Better have one good thing than ten poor things. 
Better be the workman that "needeth not to be 
ashamed." He can point to his products as the 
Eoman matron pointed to her children, "These 
are my jewels." 

Every great book is a love-letter from the 
author. Every great painting, building, business 
or loaf of bread is an expression of the love of the 
worker for his work. 



The Cure for Jealousy 

No one's success need necessarily be greater 
than another's success. This little flashlight I 
hold in my hand is just as successful as the giant 
searchlight that throws its beams for miles. 

The blade of grass can be just as successful as 
the great oak. And one is just as necessary as the 
other. 

It would be a very unhappy world if all lights 
were giant searchlights, or if all vegetation were 



GET YOUR PAY NOW 153 

giant oaks. What a failure a giant searchlight 
would be trying to find a mouse in the pantry! 
What a failure the giant oak would be trying to 
cover a lawn ! 

I used to hope I could be a great searchlight. 
I used to think if I could once get in the big tower 
and get the label on me, " Great Searchlight, ' ' I 
would really be one. I would have been a great 
disappointment. The great searchlight does not 
seek the tower, it is compelled to go into it because 
it is so great. Now I am not trying to get any- 
where, but am trying to lose myself in letting my 
own light shine, and I find it a tremendous, Happy 
job, just being a "tallow dip." 

I used to envy other people. Did you ever do 
that? I used to be very uncomfortable because 
one of my friends was doing forty things to my 
one. He was a youngster who came to the city 
green and raw from the western plains. When 
I first met him I pitied him and tried to steer 
him. I told him that two and two make four. He 
listened patiently and sincerely, and thanked me 
for telling him things. He has always been a won- 
derful listener. He knew so much more than I 
did, he saw so much farther, reasoned so much 
better, that today whenever I think of the way I 
used to try to enlighten him, I fall to figuring how 
much the solid ivory in my own head would bring 
in the open market. 



154 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

That young fellow started a business, and 
hardly had it under way until he started another. 
Then he started another and another. I do not 
know how many enterprises he has going now — 
all of them going, too. His father says when he 
was a boy he was organizing the other boys and 
getting them to do things for him. A little later, 
Uncle Sam called him to Washington to help or- 
ganize the war-work. 

Now I begin to understand that he has the bat- 
teries within him that require all this outlet in 
organizing and carrying on. He simply has to go 
on seeing, dreaming, starting and running things, 
to keep his light shining and his talents employed. 
Anything less would be failure and unhappiness 
for him. He might do twice as much as I can do, 
and yet I would be a success and he mostly failure, 
because he has so much greater equipment of ma- 
chinery to keep running and batteries to keep 
shining. He can do so much I cannot do. And 
I can do some things he cannot do! I need him 
and he needs me just as much. We are parts of 
the same watch, and the whole watch runs for 
him and for me. I am not jealous of him now. 
I am proud of him and rejoice that we all have 
the service from this great searchlight. 

I used to hope to be a great literary star. I 
would read the writings of the great ones and try 



GET TOUR PAY NOW 155 

to imitate them. But I could not do what they were 
doing. Now I understand that when they were 
writing their great literary successes, they were 
just about their Big Business of letting their light 
shine. 

I used to envy the great singers. I wanted to 
sing. Now I understand the great singers have 
to sing to use their great voice-gift batteries. I 
have not such batteries. But I get joy out of 
trying to sing. I go off to myself when I try, the 
humane society having suggested it. The great 
deserve no more credit than the small. The credit 
goes to those who best let their own light shine. 

There is such a relief in seeing this. Each of 
us has a natural monopoly of our own gifts. I 
read the wonderful messages and state papers of 
our President. I marvel at his ability to survey 
the world and bound and solve its problems. I 
am glad the world has men of such endowment. 
I am glad we have the great financiers and busi- 
ness generals. I am glad they have the batteries 
to do such things. They have to do them, there- 
fore, to live their lives. 

I turn back into history and read the chapters 
of achievement of generals, discoverers, inven- 
tors, composers, explorers. I take nothing from 
their deserving fame — for it is secure — when I 
voice the thought that they had to do these things 



156 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LITE 

to be faithful to their endowment and let their 
light shine. And I can be just as successful as 
any of them by being faithful to my own endow- 
ment and letting my own light shine ! 

So I am making the happy discovery that when 
I am jealous of the success, fame or popularity 
of others, I am not letting all my own light shine. 
I discover that we are so happy and filled in letting 
our own talents have symmetrical and full expres- 
sion that we have no place for envy of others. 
We become like the stars that sang together at 
creation morn, before the serpent of Little Busi- 
ness wriggled in with his selfishness, lies and jeal- 
ousy. 

It is often stated that of 100 men who go into 
business, 97 fail. The world means they failed 
to make their business run. But perhaps that 
failure was their next step towards success, for 
it showed that they were on the wrong path to 
being what they were planned to be. And per- 
haps great material success would have spoiled 
them or retarded their highest development. 

Of all the pathetic failures of this life, one of 
the most abject is the man who has by some 
shrewd investment or lucky stroke gotten a great 
pile of money and has stopped right there. He 
has nothing but money, and he does not know how 
to use it. He cannot buy happiness. 



GET YOUR PAY NOW 157 

Highly Paid People 

The mother is drawing the Big Business divi- 
dends as she bends over the cradle. 

The painter is getting his pay as he cradles his 
child of genius on the canvas. The author is get- 
ting his pay fathering the offspring of his life. 
The inventor is getting his pay giving birth to 
his dreams. 

The highly paid people are the people who tell 
you, "I am in this work because I cannot be con- 
tent out of it. ' ' 

There is no other real pay, and we must get it 
now, not "some day." 

One day in Innsbruck in the Tyrolean Alps I 
studied the wood-carvings on exhibition. Those 
peasants are wonderful woodcarvers. I was 
standing before one great block of wood upon 
which were carved hundreds of figures of men. 
I was told the carver had worked years producing 
this piece. Presently an American tourist who 
was trying to "do" Innsbruck in a day, rushed 
up to the block, gave it one glance, and as he 
rushed away said, ' ' Poor fool ! To waste so many 
years on one carving. He'll never get half his 
pay out of it. ' ' 

I wondered if the "poor fool" wasn't the other 
fellow — the one rushing by the block and failing 
to appreciate it and realize that the carver long 



158 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LITE 

ago got happily paid in putting his life into this 
masterpiece. 

The other day a great baritone — one whose 
phonograph records, no doubt, are in your par- 
lor — said he did not believe there were five musi- 
cians in Chicago who make a certain amount of 
money in a year. He named a figure so low I 
was very much surprised. 

"Well, well! I thought musicians were better 
paid than that." 

The baritone said a fine thing: "We are well 
paid. I don 't know anybody so well paid as I am. 
My pay is my singing. If I were not paid a cent, 
I should go right on singing. I could not live if 
I could not sing. I am never so happy as when 
I get before an appreciative audience and sing 
to it." 



The Successful Old Failure 

"I have never succeeded in my life," said an 
old man in the little Nebraska hotel. 

"What do you do?" 

"I am a country schoolteacher. ' ' 

"Why do you teach school?" 

"Well, I guess because I can't do anything else. 
I have tried to quit it often enough. I have 



GET YOUR PAY NOW 159 

stopped teaching and have gone into other lines 
that promised more money. But every time I had 
to quit it and go back to teaching. I couldn't be 
happy at anything else. I have been teaching 
country school ever since I was twenty, and now 
I am past seventy and am going to teach a country 
school next winter. ' ' 

i ' Sit down, father. I thought I was in a hurry, 
but I have all afternoon for you. This is just won- 
derful. You are really teaching because you have 
to do it to be happy ! Please tell me about your 
work. ' ' 

I plied him with questions. Hour after hour 
he talked. The apologetic look left his face, and 
it began to shine as he got over into his play- 
ground. He told me of country schoolteaching 
as he had known it for fifty years, of the boys and 
girls who had grown up under his care. He said 
he had found every boy and girl a different prob- 
lem, but he had learned that there is a key 
to unlock each heart. He told of the troubles he 
had overcome, of the many ways he had helped 
young people to find their " thimbles.' ' He said 
he had discovered there are no bad boys nor bad 
girls. And as he told me how he had won so- 
called bad ones over, he would wipe his eyes, and 
then I would wipe my eyes. 

"Father, promise me you'll never again apol- 
ogize for being a country schoolteacher. Promise 



160 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

me you'll never again say yon haven't succeeded. 
When I think of the communities you have bright- 
ened, of the colonies of young people you have 
built into the backbone of American citizenship, 
I feel it has been a real privilege I have had today 
of sitting at the feet of a great leader. 

I wish I could say this direct to thousands of 
schoolteachers who minimize their work. One of 
the greatest privileges of life is to be a school- 
teacher. It is like being a father, not to one fam- 
ily, but to a community, helping to overcome the 
failures of unworthy parents. The teacher is do- 
ing more than anyone else in the community to 
shape its tomorrow. The school is a national 
fortress, the training-camp of citizenship, the 
cradle of liberty. 



Winning the " Dirty Dozen" 

"No bad boys!" What a memory waked as 
he talked ! It was of the days of my own school- 
ing hard on the heels of those blockhead days I 
was discussing earlier in this lecture. There was 
a bunch of bad boys — so bad they called us "The 
Dirty Dozen, ' ' and we were so proud of the name 
we laid awake of nights trying to live up to it. 

We had a poor little, thin, pale, faded teacher. 



GET YOUR PAY NOW 161 

He had consumption, and went about that school- 
room wheezing and coughing. He could do noth- 
ing with us. The neighborhood voted we all de- 
served hanging. One Friday night that pale, dis- 
couraged teacher said as school was dismissing, 
"Good bye, children, I am bidding you farewell. 
I have resigned.' ' 

I blush to this day as I remember how "The 
Dirty Dozen" went out on the schoolground, 
threw up our hats and yelled, "Hooray ! School's 
out. Hain't goin' to be no more school. Teach- 
er's got consumption. Hooray!" We were too 
young to have good sense. Isn't that just like 
a bad boy the world over who does not like school? 

But there was more school. The next Monday 
morning there was a new teacher. I think the 
schoolboard had hunted all over the United States 
for the finest physical animal they could find. He 
wore long red whiskers, too — red whiskers flowing 
down over his massive chest. 

Monday morning the red-whiskered man 
stepped up with firm and confident tread and 
stood beside the desk. "Good morning," he said 
with an innocent smile. "Good morning! I am 
your new teacher. I have come to teach your 
school." 

Something told us that was true ! 

He made no rules, made no laws, he posted no 
"Thou shalt nots," but like Theodore Thomas 



162 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LITE 

before his orchestra, lie began to direct, and 
things went as sweetly and smoothly as a sym- 
phony. 

He would say to one, "Go," and he would go. 
He would say to one, l i Come, ' ' and he would come. 
He did not shout, nor bluster. He spoke softly 
and moved like a great Corliss engine. He would 
say, "That fourth boy down there, Ealph Par- 
lette — is that your name? Well, Ralph, I would 
speak to thee," and I would go right up to him 
like a little lamb. 

All this was gall and wormwood to "The 
Dirty Dozen." Our stock was going below par. 
This was the first time we had been made to obey, 
and we had never learned that ' ' to obey is better 
than sacrifice." We decided to make a sacrifice. 

Tuesday evening, after two days of obedience, 
we called a meeting of "The Dirty Dozen" back 
of the woodshed, all members present. We drew 
up resolutions — whereas, whereas, resolved, re- 
solved ! 

"Whereas, things around here ain't like they 
used to be. 

"Whereas, the presence of that red-whiskered 
teacher fills our hearts with sorrow. 

"Resolved, that 'The Dirty Dozen' in conven- 
tion assembled do here and forever declare that 
they have no future with said red-whiskered brute 
in yon temple of education. ' ' 



GET YOUR PAY NOW 163 

Next day I graduated, sine laude. I did not 
consult father about the glad details of my grad- 
uation. I preferred it to remain a secret as long 
as I could go unlicked. I wanted to be a printer. 
Next morning I started for school, but turned up 
the alley back of the barn and shot downtown to 
the printshop. I got up on a tall stool at a case 
and began to set type. How happy I was — happy 
with a certain sense of foreboding that all was 
not well with my future. 

That afternoon about four o'clock, I heard a 
firm and confident tread coming up the printshop 
stairs. You know they generally had the print- 
shop upstairs in the country town because the rent 
was cheaper. The door opened and I saw some 
red whiskers coming thru. 

Coming events cast their red whiskers before. 

I tried to hide, but that schoolteacher saw me. 
He came right up to my case. ' ' Ealph ! ' ' his voice 
was trembly like, " Ealph, what are you doing 
here? Why have you not been to school! Where 
are the other boys? Not one of them was at 
school." 

"I hain't going to school no more. I quit. 
I'm going to be a printer.' ' 

To my surprise, he approved. "Why, boy, 
that is just fine. You are going to be a printer. 
I am always glad when a boy finds out what he 
wants to do." Eight away my heart warmed 



164 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

toward him. Everybody else was trying to stop 
me from being a printer. "But, Balph, you are 
not ready to be a printer. You'll have to go to 
school and study books a good while yet before 
you can be a good printer. ' ' 

I knew better. Down in my stubborn little heart 
I had decided to be a printer right away. That 
red- whiskered man kept on talking. He couldn't 
see he was not wanted there. He told me about 
his own boyhood. How he had come of a poor 
family and nobody encouraged him to go to 
school. How when he was twenty he worked in 
a brickyard and could not write his own name. 
But he waked up, went to school, worked his way 
thru college, and now he was so glad he had done 
it. He talked so earnestly to me, but I tried not 
to hear. 

Finally he said, "Ralph, you don't understand, 
but the time is coming when if I can get you back 
to school and stick, you will not know how to thank 
me enough for getting you back. ' ' 

"I hain't goin' back!" I remembered my oath 
to "The Dirty Dozen." I was slipping, tho. 

That red-whiskered man came up closer to me 
— so close I could feel his red whiskers tickle my 
cheek. * ' Ralph, ' ' and his voice was more trembly 
like, "aren't you coming back to school? Don't 
you know if I can't get my boys back to school 
I'll be a failure and have to go away. You are 



GET YOUR PAY XOW 165 

my boys. I love my boys. I have come here to 
help you. Come on back, Balph, we haven't got- 
ten acquainted yet. ,, 

Think of a schoolteacher talking that way. 
Loves his boys? Why, I thought all a school- 
teacher wanted to do was to lick the boys. But 
he kept talking right on, his voice more trembly 
like, and you know yourself when anybody talks 
that way you just feel like jelly inside. "All 
right, [boo hoo!] I'll come back to school." 

Of course ! All "The Dirty Dozen' ' went back. 
The strike was called off. That man won us. He 
became our great playmate, and we became his 
select bodyguard. We would have waded across 
the Atlantic for that man, and not even have 
rolled up our pants. If anybody had said a word 
against that red-whiskered man, he would have 
had to settle with "The Dirty Dozen" en masse. 

School was different after that. The books were 
radiant. A new note had been struck. That 
man inspired me to go on working my way thru 
school and college. 

One day years afterward in a western city I 
saw an old, bent man who used to wear red whisk- 
ers. "My old teacher! It has come true. You 
remember the day you took me back to school 
when I had run away to the printshop? Well, I 
don't know how to thank you enough for what 
you did." 



166 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

Again his voice was trembly like. "0, boy! I 
don't need to be thanked. It is grand to find you 
again. I didn't get much money back there, but 
I got great happiness in helping you boys dis- 
cover yourselves. If I had my life to live over 
again I'd be just what I was — a schoolteacher." 



Analyzing Our Motives 

"Pay as you go," is a fine motto. 

Get your pay as you go, is a finer motto. That 
is the fine art of living. Collect the pay every 
hour and balance the books. Make every trans- 
action complete, with no strings on the future. 
No trading stamps to be cashed in afterwhile. 

I have heard many people say, "When I get 
older I shall enjoy the fruits of my labors." But 
I have never seen one of them enjoy these fruits, 
for when they got old enough their enjoying ma- 
chinery had worn out. 

Enjoy it now! 

They are like the farmer who retires and moves 
to town to enjoy himself. He soon dies, for his 
work is done. 

The man who used to be the greatest pusher in 
his home town, who gave so much of his time and 
money to improve the town and help the people, 
is now out of everything. He used to say, "Some 
day the people will thank me for this. Some day 



GET YOUE PAY NOW 167 

they will appreciate me. ' ' But now he says, * * I 'm 
done trying to serve the public. The people do 
not appreciate what you do for them. ' ' He looked 
Outside instead of Inside for his pay. 

Are you trying to do good to others! Do you 
expect it to make you popular? Do you expect 
to get some advantage or promotion in return? 
Then sooner or later your house of happiness is 
going to totter. 

Once I led a church choir. Hence these gray 
hairs. I pay tribute now to a soprano who was 
the embodiment of faithfulness. Every rehear- 
sal night, every service, she was in her place. 
Many a time I saw her come thru rain or storm 
to be in her place. We could always depend upon 
Helen, for she used to say, "It is the love of God 
in my heart that keeps me going. ' ' The preacher 
preached about her, and often held her up as a 
shining example of faithfulness. 

One day a stupidly brilliant idea entered my 
undiplomatic head. I had found another fine so- 
prano, and I invited her to come to the choir to 
sing beside Helen. I wanted to congratulate God 
on having twice the praise, and Helen on having 
somebody to sing beside her. 

You know the rest. The first time Nell sang 
beside Helen, was the last time Helen ever came 
to choir. So far as Helen was concerned, God 
wouldn't get any praise unless she could be the 



168 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIE£ 

entire praise department on the soprano row. 
And Helen said that I was her enemy and plotted 
to put her out. I shall never lead any more choirs. 
I prefer the trenches or work in a munitions fac- 
tory or something not so uncertain. 

I wish I could save many an " unselfish' y church 
and prayermeeting worker from future bitter- 
ness. I wish I could make many a community 
leader look inside and analyze motives. I wish 
I could show them their real joy is not in selfishly 
monopolizing. 

Let the plumb-line of truth go clear down where 
it will into our motives. It will save us much suf- 
fering and disappointment after while. Some 
frankly admit, "I am doing this just to get the 
money." They are far more honest than the 
person who loudly announces, "lam doing this 
just for the good I can do. ' ' 

Most likely, both are fooling themselves. 

Indeed, when I hear even the minister, the evan- 
gelist, the reformer, the social uplifter, the mis- 
sionary or any other of the recognized world 
forces for good announcing so loudly, i ' I am only 
doing this for the good I can do my fellow man, ' ' 
I wonder if he is not trying to shout to drown 
inward misgivings of just why he is doing it. The 
snake of selfishness must be crawling into his Eden 
and he is trying to camouflage it. Altruism does 
not need a press-agent. 



GET YOUB PAY NOW 169 

If he is really doing it for the joy of doing it, 
he is so happy he has no need to explain why he 
is doing it. 

When our business is paying us plenty of 
money, and we are getting ahead, getting popu- 
lar, bowed to and famous, we discover that we are 
doing wonderful good. We see new and un- 
dreamed of virtues in our work. We see it very 
necessary to the world. We really get to think- 
ing we are in it just for the great good we are 
doing. Uncle Sam found that out in the draft, 
and in the pleas for professions the war desired 
to discontinue. 

The saloonkeepers even were able to get up an 
entire book of reasons why the saloon was a na- 
tional, necessary blessing. 

Stop the salary or other selfish interest. Would 
we see so much good in it? That is the test. 



CHAPTER VIII 

GREATER SUCCESS FOR EVERYBODY 

It Is Right at Your Hand 

WHEREVER we find unhappy people, 
right there we find happy people, living 
under the same conditions, breathing 
the same air, eating the same kind of food. We 
find the unhappy people and the happy people side 
by side in the city and in the country, in avenues 
and alleys, in palaces and cabins, in kitchens and 
parlors, on land and sea, in plenty and poverty, 
feast and famine. 

As the transcontinental train crosses bare west- 
ern plains, one sometimes sees a little "shack" 
or "dugout" miles and miles away from other 
human habitation. Some fashionably dressed 
passenger in the observation car discovers it, ad- 
justs his monocle and makes the bright, bromidic 
comment, ' l Look ! Look out there ! How can any- 
body endure it to live out there on that desert a 
thousand miles from nowhere. Not a push-button 
in reach. It must be terrible." 

And often in that "shack" or "dugout" there 
are happier people than aboard those Pullmans. 

170 



GREATER SUCCESS FOR EVERYBODY 171 

So often the people out in the country or the 
frontier regions have the wrong thought about it 
themselves, and they say to the visitor, "You 
must not expect city advantages out here. We 
have to do without a lot of things, living so far 
away from civilization. We are off the main line, 
you know, and out of touch with the world. ' ' 

' ' City advantages ! ' ' What are they ? We must 
have cities and millions must live in them, but for 
every advantage the city-dweller must take on 
two disadvantages. ' ' Off the main lines ' ' of dirt, 
noise, crowds, stuffiness, squalor, gossip, dissi- 
pation, excess, fever, artificiality, but right on the 
main lines of God's sunshine, fresh air, flowers, 
birds, grass, beauty, privilege, inspiration, op- 
portunity, with hearts as true and homes as 
sacred. And civilization is bringing every good 
thing of the city right to the country-man's door. 



Look Right Around You! 

An artist once asked me to take him out in 
the country where he could sketch a landscape. I 
was very much flattered. I set out with him and 
walked an hour into the country. A mile he fol- 
lowed me, then another mile. At last he sat down 
on the roadside. ' ' Where are you taking me?" 



172 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

' ' It is only a mile farther. ' ' I was thinking of 
a little lake and a hillside where I thought he 
might make a picture. I thought no picture could 
be made without a lake and a hillside in it. ' i That 
is the nearest place to a landscape. There is 
nothing around here. ' ' 

The artist laughed. ' ' Man, where are your eyes ! 
Don't go a step farther. We have been passing 
beautiful landscapes all the way, and right here 
are wonderful ones." 

"Where?" 

He climbed the fence and sat down between two 
rows of corn. He began to sketch what he saw 
there. He drew two rows of corn with the pump- 
kin-vines growing between. He sketched the 
stalks, the waving blades and the graceful pump- 
kin-leaves, and as I watched him I saw for the 
first time how beautiful these things are. He 
made a fine picture of what I had never before 
noticed right around me. 

"That is the trouble with people," he said. 
"They so often think they have to go away off, 
over to Europe or to the other side of the world, 
to find the beautiful and precious things, when 
they can find them right in their own backyards." 

Same thing the porter said that day: "Groin' 
from where dey are to where dey ain't." 

Let us throw away our telescopes and get mi- 
croscopes! People who burn up thousands of 



GREATER SUCCESS FOR EVERYBODY 173 

miles in their big touring cars may not really tour 
as much as the one who walks a mile. A dollar 
buys some people more than a million buys others. 

Grandfather used to run around asking, 
"Where's my spectacles? Somebody's got my 
spectacles." And all the time they were on his 
nose. Did you ever see a man rushing wildly 
thru the storm to get to shelter, with an umbrella 
under his arm? 

Maeterlinck's "Bluebird" tells it wonderfully 
well. The little brother and sister, Tyltyl and 
Mytyl, set out to find the bluebird of happiness. 
They leave their home and go searching every- 
where in the earth for it. And after wearisome 
journeys in which they fail to find it, a kinder 
mood comes to them, the lesson of love and serv- 
ice to others comes into their own hearts. Then, 
lo ! they discover the bluebird right back there in 
their own home ! 



He Saw Ants, Not Niagara 

Because your playground and mine are differ- 
ent is no reason why one should fault the other. 
That farmer who looked at Niagara Falls and 
said, "This would be a bully place to wash 
sheep ! ' ' has been pitied and laughed at since that 
joke was first peddled. But perhaps that farmer 



174 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

got more real joy out of caring for his sheep than 
most of those who have laughed at him can get 
out of the grandeur of Niagara that failed to in- 
terest the farmer. 

For there is a distinguished bacteriologist of 
Chicago who went to Niagara for the first time. 
His friend led him to the wonder cataract and 
waited to hear his rapturous outbursts. Not hear- 
ing anything, he turned to look at the bacteriol- 
ogist. He had given one glance at the falls and 
then stooped down on the ground where they 
were standing. He had seen a colony of ants 
there, and he lost all interest in the falls. His 
playground was that anthill, and for four solid 
hours that man watched and studied those ants, 
for it was a new species for him. He paid scant 
attention to the falls, but thanked his friend for 
taking him to the anthill ! He came away with a 
notebook full of new antology. 

I might add that bacteriology and entomology 
are his " thimble" jobs. His " meal-ticket' ' job 
is dentistry, in which he has made a fame. 



Happiness More Than Cheerful Veneer 

Happiness? So many reply, "That means 
cheer up, cheer up ! Just smile ! Grin and bear 
it! Let the other fellow do the worrying !" 



GREATER SUCCESS FOR EVERYBODY 175 

0, there are so many people saying that and 
preaching that. Sooner or later they discover 
the emptiness of their own talk, for they are try- 
ing to lift themselves by their bootstraps. This 
veneered cheerfulness is cheerful idiocy. This 

' ' Smile, you, smile ! ' ' talk is the talk of the 

dope fiend. It is the talk of the drunkard who 
becomes intoxicated to drown his troubles. It 
is the ostrich sticking his head in the sand. It 
is running away from trouble instead of overcom- 
ing it. It is painting the face to cover up a bad 
complexion. And a lot of the society ' ' cheer up ' ' 
and parlor piffle is merely social cosmetic and po- 
lite paint. 

"Let the other fellow do the worrying. ,, If 
we have done anything to worry about, is it not 
dishonest to shove the worrying off upon the 
other fellow? 

To cure unhappiness, treat the cause, not the 
countenance. Happiness is more than a grin on 
our face ; it is a glory in our heart. It is the knowl- 
edge of being in our place. It is the conscious- 
ness that our machinery is working perfectly and 
harmoniously at the job for which it was designed. 
It is having our name written in the Blue Book 
of Life. It is the delight of seeing our rating 
daily rising in the divine Dun & Bradstreet. 

"But you can't be happy all the time. Jesus 
was the man of sorrows.' ' 



176 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

* ' Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy 
laden, and I will give yon rest." Not the loafer's 
rest, either on earth or in heaven. But the rest 
of increasing right activity. That is the ultimate 
abolition of labor and the Big Business of turn- 
ing the universe into a playground. One of the 
reasons why I didn't want to get to heaven when 
I was a little boy was that I would get so tired of 
sitting around with a harp and just shouting, 
* ' Glory ! ' ' I wanted to go where I could do things. 
Today we are better realizing that the real heaven 
is the ultimate playground of infinitely multiplied 
activities. 

It is a dismal man-made theology that has 
sought to represent the Master as a man of sor- 
rows. It is a hectic art that paints him so. Meek- 
ness, love, gentleness, purity, character, do not 
mean sorrow. They spell joy, triumph, glory, 
victory, success! Jesus was the happiest being 
the world ever looked upon, because the most suc- 
cessful Big Businessman. His constant greetings 
were, "Rejoice!" "Be of good cheer!" "Fear 
not!" "Give thanks!" 

One reason you and I do not grow faster is 
because we do not rejoice enough. We get more 
as we are grateful for what we have. Every day 
should be Thanksgiving day. 



GREATER SUCCESS FOR EVERYBODY 177 

Moral Worse Than Physical 

I cannot conceive of a place or condition in 
which we cannot find happiness — if we are try- 
ing to do right — for doing right is the source of 
happiness. And the " doing right' ' is simply being 
what we are planned to be, to the limit of onr 
ability. People can be ' ' shut-ins, ' ' they can lie 
on sickbeds and be in pain. They can be in soli- 
tary confinement, be exiled, isolated, banished; 
yet they can be happy. They can be crippled, 
blind, deaf, maimed, paralyzed, and yet they can 
be happy. 

Sometimes I think we give too much sympathy 
to physical cripples and physical prisoners, and 
we give too little to mental cripples and moral 
slaves. Moral paralysis and sin-slavery are the 
sorrow-makers. Mere suffering in body, isolation, 
hunger can be borne amid rejoicing. Paul can 
rejoice in prison while Nero upon the throne above 
him is the unhappy prisoner, a prisoner to his 
vices and lusts, his life so intolerable upon the lap 
of luxury that he flees from his palace and begs 
a slave to end his misspent life. 

I wish the child in the good home who yearns 
for "liberty' ' could be made to see that what ap- 
pears to be liberty is really bondage. I wish the 
man or woman who yearns for the "bright 
lights," and who thinks there is happiness beyond 



178 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LITE 

the moral fence, could stop and ask, "Why?" 
I wish they could see before they take the sad 
steps that the fence that seems to shut them in 
is really the fence that keeps them out of an un- 
happy prison. 



Why I Speak at Schools 

Day after day as I travel the states on these 
lecture tours I see the same monotony of faces 
— tired faces, wistful faces, discouraged faces, 
dissipated faces, hard, metallic faces. They are 
on the trains, on the streets, in the hotels. Behind 
these faces often are the kindest hearts. But 
many of them are saying, "It is too late for me," 
"I am living for my children," "I never had any 
chance," "in my day," "I wish I were dead!" 
Very few of them look forward to happier life, 
but seem to feel they have crossed some Eubicon 
of disability. That is the devil's mental lobby, 
as paralyzing as the German bureau propaganda 
of fearful frightfulness in the world war. 

"In my day." "My day" for everybody is to- 
day ! Yesterday is dead and buried. Start anew 
today with the blessed lessons of the bumps of 
yesterday. Go on and don't get bumped in the 
same place. There never was so fine a day as 



GREATER SUCCESS FOR EVERYBODY 179 

today for you and me to live, for we never were 
so finely equipped with experience. 

I love to slip away from these tired fellow- 
travelers and go over to the schoolhouse. I like 
to gather the children about me and talk to them. 
They are like the sensitive, receptive soil of a new 
garden. They are like the little flower and vege- 
table beds, the ground all pulverized and ready 
for the seed, without a clod in the way. They are 
not ' ' disillusioned. ' ' Their faces beam with cheer 
and hope and faith. To them life is a beautiful 
spring morning. They receive the seed so gladly. 

Grownups so often become hard, cloddy, bramb- 
ly, stony soil where much seed cannot grow. They 
listen dully ' i as a tale that is told. ' ' They say of 
idealism, "Fine talk, but it won't work out in real 
life." 

I like to organize these children into Flashlight 
Clubs, and make them see they are human flash- 
lights, and that they can all succeed by letting 
their talents shine. I get them to write me letters 
telling what they are going to do in life, and why. 
They have written me hundreds of letters that 
newspapers like to print as the literature of in- 
spiration. 

I keep telling them, "Children, you have what 
the world hungers for — youth, hope, love. You 
can keep it. The world thinks that as the years 
pass you must lose it, but that is not true. Just 



180 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

go on developing naturally, finding your ' thim- 
bles,' rubbing Aladdin's lamp. Then the world 
will continue to be an ever-unfolding playground 
and paradise. These hard, hopeless, ' disillu- 
sioned' faces were once the same innocent, hope- 
ful, happy faces you have. 

' ' Some day we may meet again. I shall ask you, 
'Have you succeeded?' 

"Do not reply, 'Oh, yes, I have succeeded. See 
my big house up there on the hill.' I shall not 
care very much whether you live in a big house 
or a little house. That will not be the proof of 
your success. Some of the most unsuccessful peo- 
ple live in some of the biggest houses. 

"Do not reply, 'Oh, yes, I have succeeded. See 
my name on the front page of the paper.' That 
is not the proof of your success. Some of the 
greatest failures get their names in the paper in 
the biggest type. Getting your name in the paper 
merely means that you have done something un- 
usual enough for people to want to read about 
you. The surest way to get into most papers is 
to steal a horse. The surest way to keep out is 
to be honest. 

"Do not reply, 'Oh, yes, I have succeeded. See 
the high society I move in.' Child, that will be 
one of the proofs you haven't succeeded, if you 
are idle enough to do much moving in society. 

"Do not say, 'Oh, yes, I have succeeded. See 



GREATER SUCCESS FOR EVERYBODY 181 

the great fortune I am accumulating. ' I shall 
ask you if you are working to make it accumulate, 
or it is just accumulating because you like to 
work. The dead-line runs between the two. And 
I shall think you have failed if you tell me of the 
accumulating before you tell me of your work. 

"I hope you will have these things — big houses, 
publicity, social standing, riches — if you can be- 
come great enough to have them without them 
having you. For riches, fame, influence and ma- 
terial things are tools, mighty tools in working 
out our natural development. Do not get the idea 
that goodness means poverty and badness means 
riches. As we get wisdom and understanding, 
like Solomon of old, we get long life, riches and 
honor. 

"But you will not have to answer a word. I 
look over a field of wheat and see whether it looks 
yellow, parched, bare in spots, or see that it is 
growing luxuriantly. So I shall look in your face 
and read your success in the light of enthusiasm, 
hope and happiness shining there/ ' 



"Burying Bryan" 

America is rich in gentlemen. But one of the 
most derided and maligned of them all got off the 
train the other day in the St. Louis Terminal Sta- 



182 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LITE 

tion. I looked in his face and saw the same seren- 
ity and power I saw in it a few years ago when 
he got off a train in that same station and there 
was such a jam of people to see him the police 
could hardly keep them back. He was coming to 
the national convention of his party for which he 
had so often been the standardbearer, and his 
leadership in the approaching battle drew the 
crowd. 

But now he was leading no political fight, hence 
there was no crowd, no shouting, and the papers 
came out that day telling how Bryan had fallen. 
They have been busy burying William Jennings 
Bryan year after year these decades. And he has 
gone calmly on his way, undisturbed and unruffled. 
He has been true to his own conscience. Whether 
you agree or disagree with Mr. Bryan in his 
course or his teachings, you cannot help respect- 
ing his moral courage. He has gone on these 
years with the simple faith of the child and pro- 
claimed and lived the fundamentals of righteous- 
ness as he has seen them. This much-buried 
Bryan has grown from a man to an institution. 

* ' Have you noted that almost every cause I have 
advocated all these years has been written into 
the law of our land by one or the other party V 
he said that day. "And if I live twenty years 
longer I shall see the other three prevail — national 



GREATER SUCCESS FOR EVERYBODY 183 

prohibition, national woman suffrage, and world 
peace. ' ' 

' ' The common people heard him gladly. ' ' And 
today wherever Mr. Bryan goes to speak, there 
the people flock to hear him. He has been called 
the greatest living orator. His oratory is but the 
light that shines from a great life. 

A Chicago paper recently said that the power 
of J. Pierpont Morgan, the great financier, passed 
at his death, but the power of Mr. Bryan would 
last twenty years in this land after his death. 

Such a life is £ gleam of the success Big Busi- 
ness teaches. 



Irrigate! 

When I was a boy in school, the map of the 
United States was easier studied than today. The 
western half was a great white expanse called, 
1 ' Great American Desert. ' ' It produced little. It 
had few towns or human habitations. People who 
traveled over it came back east and wrote books 
about "Western Wilds,' ' and agents got five dol- 
lars for the book. How I used to read "Western 
Wilds' ' and thrill over the Indian fighting and 
lonely adventures and gold hunting and buffalo 
shooting ! Little did I think I should ever travel 



184 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LITE 

this wild country and find there cities abreast of 
the world in progress, and whole states leading 
the Union in literacy. 

That map showed just one railroad across the 
West, and the Government helped to build it. 
Statesmen said the Government's investment in 
that road would be money wasted. Nothing could 
come out of that sand and sagebrush, fit only for 
the savage and the coyote. 

I am only a youngster yet — in heart — but in 
these few years I have seen a dozen railroads cross 
the West and vein it with a network of branch 
lines. The " Great American Desert" had been 
waiting these ages for the touch of water and 
cultivation. All the elements were waiting there 
these ages to become gardens of prosperity. 

Today I see the map of humanity, the last 
" Great American Desert." It is tired, discour- 
aged, thirsty, hungry. It asks for bread and gets 
a stone. It feeds on the husks. It looks Outside 
instead of Inside. I know that every part of this 
desert can bloom into the green garden of happi- 
ness as the light of the heavenly vision is seen. 
The button is within everybody 's reach. The bat- 
teries wait to be turned on. Irrigate ! 

I know that failure and disappointment can be 
overcome. I know that troubles can be turned 
into blessings. The grain of sand was a trouble 
that pushed into the oyster's shell. It could not 



GREATER SUCCESS FOR EVERYBODY 185 

push it out, so it covered it with beauty and turned 
it into a pearl. I know that every trouble, handi- 
cap and burden we cannot cure we can turn into a 
jewel to deck the walls of our house of life. 

And I know that it is not a matter of brains or 
brilliancy or location, for the dullest oyster down 
in the dark sea-bottom can make a finer pearl than 
the smartest scientist in his endowed laboratory. 



World a Playground School 

Years I have dreamed of a playground school, 
where nobody would work, but everybody would 
play all day — every day a holiday. Where there 
would be no blockheads. Where every bird would 
sing, every bud would blossom, every fish would 
swim. Where the shops and all mills would be 
studios. Where all would be masters, because all 
would be artist servants. 

Visionary ! Impractical ! 

Now it comes to me more and more that the 
Nazarene Schoolmaster came to turn this world 
into such a school. It is all around us now. The 
multitudes are in the shops — restless millions — 
hungry for teaching. The school is already 
founded ; the need is for me to attend it. 

Our playground begins with the toys around 
mother's knee. It expands into the tops and 



186 THE BIG BUSINESS OF LIFE 

marbles around our dooryard. Then it widens 
out into the school playground and the college 
campus. And presently we are on the farm or 
in the home, or in the bank, the office, the store 
or the shop, with the community our playground. 

The years merely enlarge our playground and 
bring better, bigger games. The fence merely ex- 
pands. The toys of childhood become too small. 
The tools of later years soon dull. The structures 
decay and fall. The pictures fade. The micro- 
scope reaches its untimely limit. The telescope 
falls short in reaching for the infinite. 

Then to be happier, GO ON ENLARGING 
YOUR PLAYGROUND ! 

Each year tells me more surely that the play- 
ground will widen as we learn to play the greater 
games. And we shall build the structures that 
will not fall, with the tools that will not dull. "We 
shall paint the pictures that will not fade. The 
great Playmaster has them ready for us when we 
are ready for them. 



This the Philosopher's Stone 

All the restless ages have sought the Philos- 
opher's Stone whose touch would transmute all 
things into gold. 



GREATER SUCCESS FOR EVERYBODY 187 

We had looked Outside. Here it is in every- 
body's life, Inside. Big Business I have called 
it in this talk. It turns everything it touches into 
pure gold. It transforms kitchen walls into pal- 
ace halls. It transforms the gross into the glori- 
ous. It makes the serf a sovereign. It turns 
hopeless drudgery into hopeful service. It turns 
necessity into privilege. It gives power to the 
powerless. It teaches that nothing is unworthy, 
no work contemptible, no life undeserving. It 
shows the child its path, the man his privilege, 
the veteran his victory. It opens blind eyes, un- 
stops deaf ears. It dissolves the world's system 
of caste and writes a new dictionary of meanings. 

The Big Business of Life — the business of abol- 
ishing toil and keeping the world a playground 
for children ! 

SO I SHALL QUIT WORK TODAY 

AND 

RELEAEN HOW TO PLAY 



Ralph Parlette's Other B ooks 

THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

The School that Completes Our Education 

" 'The University of Hard Knocks' is a great big boost for 
everybody who will read it — and everybody ought to read it." — 
Judge Ben B. Lindsey. 

" "The University of Hard Knocks' is simply great t Its 
humor is bully and its philosophy is the sort that puts the stuff 
in you." — Private Peat. 

Library Edition, Price $1.25. 
Add 10c for postage 



POCKETS AND PARADISES 

The Dominion of Us 

This new book has grown out of Mr. Parlette's latest lecture 
theme which has been pronounced by many communities his 
best. Here he shows that our wealth is not just what we put 
into our pockets. 

Ready for Delivery January 1, 1920 

Price $1.25 Net 
Add 10c for postage 



IT'S UP TO YOU! 

Are You Shaking Up or Rattling Down? 

"Just as good as the Message to Garcia. Would rather be 
author of it than President of the Bank." — John A. Carroll, 
Pres., Hyde Park State Bank, Chicago, 111. 

"Made a tremendous hit with our executives and supervisors. 
We want more copies for our Chicago office and a supply for 
our Kansas City office." — John W. Sorrelle, Employment Man- 
ager, Montgomery Ward & Co. 

(Booklet) Price 35c Postpaid 



GO ON SOUTH! 

The Best Is Yet to Come 

With rare good humor and homely philosophy the lives of 
men are paralleled to the great Mississippi River. 

"We are. impressed with Mr. Parlette's style of writing and 
want 400 copies of Go On South for our subscription salesmen." 
— Fred W. Stone, Review of Reviews. 

(Booklet) Price 35c Postpaid 

Parlette-Padget Co., 122 So. Michigan Ave., Chicago 

Ask your bookseller or send direct 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Dec. 2004 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATIOf 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



f 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




013 611 987 4 



